An American journalist would've rephrased the marketing blurb on the phone, not tried it out, and welcomed our new invincible mobile overlords, only to be made fun of by Jon Stewart later that night.
Finally, why do entertainers continue to feel that they have to present their beliefs within a movie...?
The best literature or art often advances a belief or a "side" if you will. Do you think Aliens or The Abyss offered no beliefs or morales? Or how about No Country For Old Men (moving beyond James Cameron and SF) which was actually an analysis of free will and fate? The problem with the "beliefs" laid in to Avatar is that they were clumsy, amateurish and clichéd. They stuck out and were annoying and preachy rather than thought-provoking. It is better to avoid allegory altogether than to do it poorly.
A good story teller is one that can engage your mind and your senses. Sadly Avatar only engaged the senses.
Maybe I'm not understanding something but is the problem that Vista and 7 or more susceptible to AdWare / malware than XP is? So even if I only use Firefox and don't enable JavaScript and don't let flashtastic sites wedge in their crap, I'm still going to get malware? Or are we talking IE-using JavaScript-running Flashtastic-website-browsing yes-install-that-plugin-clicking bozos are more susceptible with Vista and 7?
I thought all the radioactive crap floating around on the Internet was still opt-in for the most part.
Obviously we're talking metric. Some huge Italian (French are too skinny) who, from cheek to cheek, measures the same as the wavelength of krypton-86. (I know there's a standing wave joke in here somewhere.)
There are only really two reasons why a business would distribute its software as open source.
The software in question is a compliment to the company's product or service ("commoditize the compliment").
Software similar to the software in question currently provides a competitive advantage to a competitor.
Why should Google give up a competitive advantage when that would only increase their competitors' reach into their market?
Even the inventor of the light bulb filed a patent, so that anyone willing to build the device for their own factory could do so. They just wouldn't be able to sell the product.
The anecdotes you link to in your anonymous post begin to indicate the problems a society builds for itself when it tries to replace morality with law. The two are not the same thing.
Legal opinions to the contrary are what allowed the use of this technique within the framework of the law. Again, change the law if there's wriggle room for something like this to occur. The first two paragraphs of page 5 of the CAT PDF read as follows (boldface added):
CAT defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether
physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person...by or at the instigation of
or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an
official capacity."
This definition does not include "pain or suffering arising only
from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."
According to the State Department's analysis of CAT, which was included in President Reagan's transmittal of the Convention to the Senate for its advice and consent, this definition was intended to be interpreted in a "relatively limited fashion, corresponding to the common understanding of torture as an extreme practice which
is universally condemned."
Indeed, CAT Article 16 further obligates signatory parties to take action to prevent "other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment which do not amount to acts of torture...."
According to the State Department, this distinction reflected the belief by the drafters of CAT that torture must be "severe" and that rough treatment, such as police brutality, "while deplorable, does not amount to 'torture'" for purposes of the Convention.
Further, CAT provides that offenses of torture require a specific intent to cause severe pain and suffering; an act that results in unanticipated and unintended severity of pain and suffering is not torture for purposes of the Convention.
I am not a lawyer, but I can see how this language can be used to reason that waterboarding is not, legally speaking, torture. Fix the law.
And then they turn around and condemn these same companies for implementing the monitoring hardware that they were required to by law! Schumer and Graham are politicians, and make no mistake about it: their positioning on this issue is more for the purposes of re-election than for any goodwill they have to the people of Iran.
I agree that we can rightly characterize them as hypocrites. I think this is a rare time where international law, doing the right thing, and politics are aligned. Schumer and Graham are really rumbling about U.N. sanctions being disobeyed, not about the human rights violations. I suspect that the human rights issue is simply a "good crisis" they feel shouldn't be "wasted."
Many in the USA subscribe to a theory of American exceptionalism.... The theory is pretty simple: when America does something, it's OK....
That is not what American Exceptionalism is about. "American exceptionalism refers to the theory that the United States occupies a special niche among developed nations in terms of its national credo, historical evolution, political and religious institutions and unique origins." - American Exceptionalism.
The idea of Nixon-style exceptionalism (a priori exceptionalism as discussed in the Wikipedia entry) is held only by a few, and often thrown out as a strawman, like you just did. You can disagree with the notion all you like, just don't distort the expressed views of those who do.
Condemnation of Iran's actions and punishment of Nokia and Siemens for sanction violations makes sense. Iran is using this technology to directly curb free expression. None of the U.S. government entities mentioned in this discussion do that. They may listen in, but they aren't turning around and cracking skulls as a follow up. Saying that the NSA and FBI are somehow equivalent to Iran's government and militia is ridiculous.
Americans get waterboarded more often by other American soldiers as part of their training regimen. Is that torture? Should their instructors be thrown into jail for giving them this training? There was no circumvention of legal frameworks, the three people who were waterboarded were done so within the framework of the law. Change the laws, but don't be dishonest about the ones we have. (And no, I'm not claiming the waterboarding was "right" because we did it.) Also, remember that the treatment American soldiers and civilians already get from the enemy includes real torture (stabbing, cutting, twisting limbs until dislocation or until they break, and beheading).
...this is going to negatively affect food aid to the third world.
Worse, it doesn't actually fix the pollution problem. It makes it possible (and likely) that the worst polluters simply pay their way out of the restrictions. What it does do is put politicians firmly in control of the economy. It will be politicians, in the shape of a bureaucracy, that decide who gets how many credits when. This is not about the environment at all, it is a massive power grab by the federal government, just like the health care bill, just like the bailouts. This is authoritarianism at work.
Another poster asked why congress couldn't take time to work it through and get it right. The reason is that the Democrats need to ram it through as quickly as possible with as little review as possible, because the more people examine it and reason through the impacts to our freedom the less they like it. It's the same reason the health care bill has been prepared in relative secret.
The primary conservative argument against formally recognized "gay marriage" is that the kind of government conservatives desire has no place defining marriage.
So basically this is the Dennie's of computer games. Dennie's menus have pictures of everything, so even if you're too drunk to speak, you can still point at the picture of your food, then to your mouth.
I believe they don't think their main customer is affluent, professional, or geeky. If they thought these things, they wouldn't have put ECW wrestling on in prime time. Nor would they run lousy horror movies all weekend long. They're doing their darnedest to be just another generic TV station, with a general bent toward low-brow action.
The reason there's so much science fiction on TV right now, except, notably, on the Sci Fi channel, is that the audience has become accustomed in large part to science fiction tropes. Enough so, that Knight Rider, Chuck and Heroes don't really seem like science fiction.
What we science fiction fans (affluent, professional, and geeky) are looking for is quality science fiction. Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Firefly, Doctor Who... We're looking for shows that don't treat audience members like idiots. The Sci Fi channel has been moving firmly in the direction of "broadening out" to the idiot demographic. That's just sad.
Slashdot Mirror
For work not previously made into movies or TV how about:
For reboots, how about a truer version of Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files.
"And the circle is complete..." Nicely done.
An American journalist would've rephrased the marketing blurb on the phone, not tried it out, and welcomed our new invincible mobile overlords, only to be made fun of by Jon Stewart later that night.
The best literature or art often advances a belief or a "side" if you will. Do you think Aliens or The Abyss offered no beliefs or morales? Or how about No Country For Old Men (moving beyond James Cameron and SF) which was actually an analysis of free will and fate? The problem with the "beliefs" laid in to Avatar is that they were clumsy, amateurish and clichéd. They stuck out and were annoying and preachy rather than thought-provoking. It is better to avoid allegory altogether than to do it poorly.
A good story teller is one that can engage your mind and your senses. Sadly Avatar only engaged the senses.
No he's saying it sucks less once you get used to it.
OK, that clears things up for me. Thanks for the reply.
Some gal named Abby Normal...
Maybe I'm not understanding something but is the problem that Vista and 7 or more susceptible to AdWare / malware than XP is? So even if I only use Firefox and don't enable JavaScript and don't let flashtastic sites wedge in their crap, I'm still going to get malware? Or are we talking IE-using JavaScript-running Flashtastic-website-browsing yes-install-that-plugin-clicking bozos are more susceptible with Vista and 7?
I thought all the radioactive crap floating around on the Internet was still opt-in for the most part.
Obviously we're talking metric. Some huge Italian (French are too skinny) who, from cheek to cheek, measures the same as the wavelength of krypton-86. (I know there's a standing wave joke in here somewhere.)
Either they're incredibly tough, or wafer thin.
Why should Google give up a competitive advantage when that would only increase their competitors' reach into their market? Even the inventor of the light bulb filed a patent, so that anyone willing to build the device for their own factory could do so. They just wouldn't be able to sell the product.
The anecdotes you link to in your anonymous post begin to indicate the problems a society builds for itself when it tries to replace morality with law. The two are not the same thing.
Good contribution to the discussion. Thank you. (mod parent up)
Legal opinions to the contrary are what allowed the use of this technique within the framework of the law. Again, change the law if there's wriggle room for something like this to occur. The first two paragraphs of page 5 of the CAT PDF read as follows (boldface added):
I am not a lawyer, but I can see how this language can be used to reason that waterboarding is not, legally speaking, torture. Fix the law.
I agree that we can rightly characterize them as hypocrites. I think this is a rare time where international law, doing the right thing, and politics are aligned. Schumer and Graham are really rumbling about U.N. sanctions being disobeyed, not about the human rights violations. I suspect that the human rights issue is simply a "good crisis" they feel shouldn't be "wasted."
That is not what American Exceptionalism is about. "American exceptionalism refers to the theory that the United States occupies a special niche among developed nations in terms of its national credo, historical evolution, political and religious institutions and unique origins." - American Exceptionalism.
The idea of Nixon-style exceptionalism (a priori exceptionalism as discussed in the Wikipedia entry) is held only by a few, and often thrown out as a strawman, like you just did. You can disagree with the notion all you like, just don't distort the expressed views of those who do.
Condemnation of Iran's actions and punishment of Nokia and Siemens for sanction violations makes sense. Iran is using this technology to directly curb free expression. None of the U.S. government entities mentioned in this discussion do that. They may listen in, but they aren't turning around and cracking skulls as a follow up. Saying that the NSA and FBI are somehow equivalent to Iran's government and militia is ridiculous.
Americans get waterboarded more often by other American soldiers as part of their training regimen. Is that torture? Should their instructors be thrown into jail for giving them this training? There was no circumvention of legal frameworks, the three people who were waterboarded were done so within the framework of the law. Change the laws, but don't be dishonest about the ones we have. (And no, I'm not claiming the waterboarding was "right" because we did it.) Also, remember that the treatment American soldiers and civilians already get from the enemy includes real torture (stabbing, cutting, twisting limbs until dislocation or until they break, and beheading).
Worse, it doesn't actually fix the pollution problem. It makes it possible (and likely) that the worst polluters simply pay their way out of the restrictions. What it does do is put politicians firmly in control of the economy. It will be politicians, in the shape of a bureaucracy, that decide who gets how many credits when. This is not about the environment at all, it is a massive power grab by the federal government, just like the health care bill, just like the bailouts. This is authoritarianism at work.
Another poster asked why congress couldn't take time to work it through and get it right. The reason is that the Democrats need to ram it through as quickly as possible with as little review as possible, because the more people examine it and reason through the impacts to our freedom the less they like it. It's the same reason the health care bill has been prepared in relative secret.
It's a simple matter of conflating the term "homeopathy" with "home remedy". One sells better than the other.
Dude, there are only so many Steve-Ballmer-in-Clown-Suit anime fan service sites. I'm guessing Google already found them all for you.
I vote for "Cheese" to go with the French Idealist Socialism theme.
We would have a Big Drug Cheese, an Internet Cheese, the Auto Cheese... Cue "giant melting pot" jokes.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner.
The primary conservative argument against formally recognized "gay marriage" is that the kind of government conservatives desire has no place defining marriage.
So basically this is the Dennie's of computer games. Dennie's menus have pictures of everything, so even if you're too drunk to speak, you can still point at the picture of your food, then to your mouth.
Score one for bipartisanship!
I believe they don't think their main customer is affluent, professional, or geeky. If they thought these things, they wouldn't have put ECW wrestling on in prime time. Nor would they run lousy horror movies all weekend long. They're doing their darnedest to be just another generic TV station, with a general bent toward low-brow action.
The reason there's so much science fiction on TV right now, except, notably, on the Sci Fi channel, is that the audience has become accustomed in large part to science fiction tropes. Enough so, that Knight Rider, Chuck and Heroes don't really seem like science fiction.
What we science fiction fans (affluent, professional, and geeky) are looking for is quality science fiction. Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Firefly, Doctor Who... We're looking for shows that don't treat audience members like idiots. The Sci Fi channel has been moving firmly in the direction of "broadening out" to the idiot demographic. That's just sad.
This monkey knew when to ignore Gaussian copula functions.