Same here in Maryland, on both counts. The state is so reliably Democrat that neither party even bothers running ads. And I recently saw an electoral map of our most recent Gubernatorial election - the winner only had the majority in the 3 most urban counties in the state. But he has a By God mandate, and he used it to call "emergency" sessions of the legislature to address a budget "crisis" that was known about for months. He then used it to raise taxes on people above a certain income - 90% of which live in one of the counties that voted for him.
FFS, call an expert. If an engineer with a design firm wrote in and asked how to set up the company's servers, but he doesn't want to hire any IT people, everyone would be incensed at his stupidity for not calling in an expert. But somehow IT training makes people qualified HVAC design engineers?
"I think it's the extension-heavy approach which makes Firefox the least stable piece of software I've ever used. I doubt it crashes if you don't install any extensions."
You are aware that you could simply test it yourself, instead of "I think" and "I doubt"? How do you know it's not one of the extensions that are buggy? Just uninstall the extensions and see if Firefox runs well. If it does, then add them back one at a time until you get instability.
"I'm not exactly sure what Zimmermann is opposed to."
Zimmerman is opposed to the possibility of McCain being elected. Therefore, he is pretending that "Biden the VP candidate" is somehow not the same as "Biden the sponsor of the bill he opposed".
First, let me unequivocally state taht teh No Fly list, in form an execution, is a retarded disaster, causing more problems than it cures.
However...
I just read today about a female suicide bomber in Iraq who was detained prior to the explosives going off. She appeared to be drugged, and didn't know exactly what she was doing. Apparently she had just gotten married, and her husband's female relatives fitted her up with the vest and sent her out. She is 14 or 15.
We can argue about who is to blame about terrorism, and what should be done, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that proxies are being used by terrorists, and those proxies don't fit the regular "profile". I'm not sure what to do about it, and the No Fly list certainly is no help, but saying that we should ignore folks that "don't fit the profile" isn't the answer.
There's a scene in "The Professional" where Leon is teaching Mathilda how to kill someone with a sniper rifle. It's very shocking when she pulls the trigger, and then it shows it's a dart gun. No one was hurt, and Mathilda exclaims "Can we kill someone else?" while Leon is hustling her off the roof because he knows others will not see it as a game.
Children don't recognize that play is training for work; adults recognize that play can have real consequences, just like work. I think we can pretty much tell which side of that developmental divide you are on.
In summary, you're fucked. Get as far away as you can before the lawsuits come.
(And yes, I know that he isn't making therapeutic equipment - like that matters in today's legal climate)
I work for a Very Large Non-Profit with a biomedical branch, and they've been working on a new software system for years. After hundreds of millions spent, they still can't figure out how to process a lot of database transactions quickly. When asked why banks can do this with ATM data and not lose a single penny, management response has been "We're the Very Large Non-Profit Organization - we're different". They finally asked the project leader to retire (God forbid they fire him for incompetence), and are valuating whether to scrap the whole thing and start fresh, a la the FAA and IRS.
You're an idiot. Insurance companies charge that way, and employers pass it along. Why do the insurers do it that way? Because of A) actuarial tables (kids cost less to insure because they are less likely, on average, to need expensive treatments) and B) overhead (if it's 1 person or 20 in a family, it's still just 1 account, so the incremental cost of adding a person to the account is less than adding a whole new employee)
"I don't think you can get a restraining order against protesters (pesky first amendment)"
Sure you can - they put limits on abortion protesters all the time. Likewise, if I was to stand in front of your house and yell to the world how hot I thought your daughter was, and how much young men want to have sex with her, I can't see a judge saying "sorry - first amendment and all that".
Expressing ones belief in public spaces is a basic human right; so is carrying a handgun. But if I walk behind someone, pointing a gun at their head, it doesn't matter if I say "I'm not going to shoot him - I'm just exercising my right to bear arms", I have reached the point where the exercise of my right is affecting others, and there are limits to that.
Also the source of the phrase "Just think of it as evolution in action" applied to someone who was determined to kill themselves and remove their possible contribution to the gene pool.
What expression would be involved in going to the funeral of children (or soldiers) that you don't know, have no connection with, and disrupting the activities to express opinions that have nothing to do with the people involved? The Westboro folks are victimizing others for the sole purpose of getting publicity for their cause. That is not freedom of expression.
Look at it another way - you can get a restraining order against someone for what they SAY to you, not what they DO to you. Even if what they are saying is not threatening. And a restraining order is simply a threat of state sanctioned violence - "if you don't leave this person alone, we will MAKE you leave them alone by using armed officers).
As for "some group you like/believe in", you are missing the point - ANY group that practices such activities forfeits my respect and belief, assuming they had it to begin with.
Someone gave my daughter a light sensitive doll that made noise when the lights were turned on and off. Problem was that I think someone slipped the soundtrack from "The Exorcist" into the sampling lab - it was the creepiest doll laugh ever heard. One too many incidents where I turned on the light and immediately started looking for Chuckie and I pulled that bitch's batteries for good.
The Westboro jackass announced he was going to picket the funeral of the Amish girls killed in Nickel Mines a few years ago. They decided not to when the State Police informed them that they could not "guarantee their safety".
Translation: "You are proposing to come to a blue collar state with more guns than most 1st world armies and we take special pride in the Amish. Assuming you survive we will probably ticket you for speeding on your way out of the state. Your call."
And it was no joke - the fireworks company I work for is based there, and my crewchief was ready to attend the funeral with a baseball bat in case any of those freaks showed up. The Amish are non-violent - but their neighbors have no such compunctions.
"California has a lower limit for cancer causing chemicals than other states, which is why you see those signs on pretty much every older building."
No, California has a law requiring ANYTHING that contains ANYTHING that MAY cause cancer to have that sign. As far as I know, there are no lower limits - if it contains any amount of any of the list of substances known to the State of California to possibly cause cancer, it gets the label.
Slashdot Mirror
Same here in Maryland, on both counts. The state is so reliably Democrat that neither party even bothers running ads. And I recently saw an electoral map of our most recent Gubernatorial election - the winner only had the majority in the 3 most urban counties in the state. But he has a By God mandate, and he used it to call "emergency" sessions of the legislature to address a budget "crisis" that was known about for months. He then used it to raise taxes on people above a certain income - 90% of which live in one of the counties that voted for him.
FFS, call an expert. If an engineer with a design firm wrote in and asked how to set up the company's servers, but he doesn't want to hire any IT people, everyone would be incensed at his stupidity for not calling in an expert. But somehow IT training makes people qualified HVAC design engineers?
Spend the money now, and only cry once.
"I think it's the extension-heavy approach which makes Firefox the least stable piece of software I've ever used. I doubt it crashes if you don't install any extensions."
You are aware that you could simply test it yourself, instead of "I think" and "I doubt"? How do you know it's not one of the extensions that are buggy? Just uninstall the extensions and see if Firefox runs well. If it does, then add them back one at a time until you get instability.
"You're not talking about shagging are you?"
No, he's talking about fucking - please try to keep up.
"Journalists don't create stories, they document existing events."
HAAAHaHahahahah...Awesome. +5 Funny!
Oh, wait - you were serious about that weren't you?
You know they have a whole new class of antipsychotic drugs out there now - I think you ought to try one and see if it works for you.
"I'm not exactly sure what Zimmermann is opposed to."
Zimmerman is opposed to the possibility of McCain being elected. Therefore, he is pretending that "Biden the VP candidate" is somehow not the same as "Biden the sponsor of the bill he opposed".
First, let me unequivocally state taht teh No Fly list, in form an execution, is a retarded disaster, causing more problems than it cures.
However...
I just read today about a female suicide bomber in Iraq who was detained prior to the explosives going off. She appeared to be drugged, and didn't know exactly what she was doing. Apparently she had just gotten married, and her husband's female relatives fitted her up with the vest and sent her out. She is 14 or 15.
We can argue about who is to blame about terrorism, and what should be done, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that proxies are being used by terrorists, and those proxies don't fit the regular "profile". I'm not sure what to do about it, and the No Fly list certainly is no help, but saying that we should ignore folks that "don't fit the profile" isn't the answer.
Who would have thought those loathesome, racist commercials were actually trenchant documentaries?
There's a scene in "The Professional" where Leon is teaching Mathilda how to kill someone with a sniper rifle. It's very shocking when she pulls the trigger, and then it shows it's a dart gun. No one was hurt, and Mathilda exclaims "Can we kill someone else?" while Leon is hustling her off the roof because he knows others will not see it as a game.
Children don't recognize that play is training for work; adults recognize that play can have real consequences, just like work. I think we can pretty much tell which side of that developmental divide you are on.
http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html
In summary, you're fucked. Get as far away as you can before the lawsuits come.
(And yes, I know that he isn't making therapeutic equipment - like that matters in today's legal climate)
I work for a Very Large Non-Profit with a biomedical branch, and they've been working on a new software system for years. After hundreds of millions spent, they still can't figure out how to process a lot of database transactions quickly. When asked why banks can do this with ATM data and not lose a single penny, management response has been "We're the Very Large Non-Profit Organization - we're different". They finally asked the project leader to retire (God forbid they fire him for incompetence), and are valuating whether to scrap the whole thing and start fresh, a la the FAA and IRS.
And no, I haven't quit.
Yet.
You're an idiot. Insurance companies charge that way, and employers pass it along. Why do the insurers do it that way? Because of
A) actuarial tables (kids cost less to insure because they are less likely, on average, to need expensive treatments) and
B) overhead (if it's 1 person or 20 in a family, it's still just 1 account, so the incremental cost of adding a person to the account is less than adding a whole new employee)
"I don't think you can get a restraining order against protesters (pesky first amendment)"
Sure you can - they put limits on abortion protesters all the time. Likewise, if I was to stand in front of your house and yell to the world how hot I thought your daughter was, and how much young men want to have sex with her, I can't see a judge saying "sorry - first amendment and all that".
Expressing ones belief in public spaces is a basic human right; so is carrying a handgun. But if I walk behind someone, pointing a gun at their head, it doesn't matter if I say "I'm not going to shoot him - I'm just exercising my right to bear arms", I have reached the point where the exercise of my right is affecting others, and there are limits to that.
Also the source of the phrase "Just think of it as evolution in action" applied to someone who was determined to kill themselves and remove their possible contribution to the gene pool.
Also appropriate to the Darwin Awards
"She liked it.
Please, for the love of all things in my childhood, don't let it be #2!"
I present you the Harry Potter Vibrating Broomstick
http://www.littledivatoys.com/2007/09/10/harry-potter-broomstick-sweeping-the-net-again/
What expression would be involved in going to the funeral of children (or soldiers) that you don't know, have no connection with, and disrupting the activities to express opinions that have nothing to do with the people involved? The Westboro folks are victimizing others for the sole purpose of getting publicity for their cause. That is not freedom of expression.
Look at it another way - you can get a restraining order against someone for what they SAY to you, not what they DO to you. Even if what they are saying is not threatening. And a restraining order is simply a threat of state sanctioned violence - "if you don't leave this person alone, we will MAKE you leave them alone by using armed officers).
As for "some group you like/believe in", you are missing the point - ANY group that practices such activities forfeits my respect and belief, assuming they had it to begin with.
No, Maryland is VERY well off financially.
We just elect assholes as our leaders.
"Because, really, who wants to loose an entire spaceship in your gigantic ass?"
I believe you know the real reason she didn't want to move, but just don't want to admit it to yourself.
Someone gave my daughter a light sensitive doll that made noise when the lights were turned on and off. Problem was that I think someone slipped the soundtrack from "The Exorcist" into the sampling lab - it was the creepiest doll laugh ever heard. One too many incidents where I turned on the light and immediately started looking for Chuckie and I pulled that bitch's batteries for good.
Yep - they are volunteers, and do a wonderful service for the grieving family. I just wish it wouldn't be necessary.
The Westboro jackass announced he was going to picket the funeral of the Amish girls killed in Nickel Mines a few years ago. They decided not to when the State Police informed them that they could not "guarantee their safety".
Translation: "You are proposing to come to a blue collar state with more guns than most 1st world armies and we take special pride in the Amish. Assuming you survive we will probably ticket you for speeding on your way out of the state. Your call."
And it was no joke - the fireworks company I work for is based there, and my crewchief was ready to attend the funeral with a baseball bat in case any of those freaks showed up. The Amish are non-violent - but their neighbors have no such compunctions.
"We can crash the whole CA government in one swoop, just like Captian Kirk telling a computer "this statement is false!""
Feh - the Comptroller can crash California by just being an asshole and appealing to the Lords of COBOL.
"California has a lower limit for cancer causing chemicals than other states, which is why you see those signs on pretty much every older building."
No, California has a law requiring ANYTHING that contains ANYTHING that MAY cause cancer to have that sign. As far as I know, there are no lower limits - if it contains any amount of any of the list of substances known to the State of California to possibly cause cancer, it gets the label.
"I just got back from a trip there and saw those signs everywhere, even on most buildings. It seems to the locals it has even become a running gag."
Don't worry - it's a running gag for the rest of the country too.
"Is there a strange group out there that wants to go back to a tribal hunter/gatherer type existence?"
Yes, and they mainly live in Berkley - that's why you always hear this stuff coming out of California first.
"Why are there so many similarities to the way the buildings fell to a controlled demolition?
Both are afected by gravity, which exerts a downward force."
Bullshit! Gravity is just a theory, like Evolution.