"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is vigilant and stops a guy who helps people buy what appear to a layperson to be the health products they want to buy but are in fact frauds that will kill them or do nothing while getting them to avoid proper treatment."
I'm not sure which is right, because I don't have the facts of the case, but it's quite possible that what the FDA is doing is a good thing.
Unless the other carrier follows suit, how on Earth do they expect to keep customers?
Odds are good that they're trying to see if other carriers follow suit. Back in the days before the Internet, 1 airline would raise prices at 4:45 PM on Friday afternoon, see if the other airlines raised their prices to match over the weekend, and if they didn't then lower the prices back down at 8:15 AM on Monday morning. Legally, that's not price fixing, even though in practice it is.
Cuz ya do know folks, Ya do know, livng in this country you know, that every time you're exposed to advertising you realize once again that America's leading industry, America's most profitable business is still the manufacturing, packaging, distribution, and marketing of BULLSHIT. High quality, Grade A, Prime cut, Pure American BULLSHIT.
And the sad part is, Most people seem indoctorinated to believe that bullshit only comes from certain places, certain sources. Advertising, politics, salesmen, not true. Bullshit is everywhere, bullshit is rampant. Parents are full of shit, teachers are full of shit, clergymen are full of shit, and law enforcment people are full of shit, this entire country is completely full of shit, and always has been, from the Declaration of Independance, to the Constitution, to the Star Spangled Banner, it's really nothing more than one BIG steaming pile of red white and blue all Americian BULLSHIT.
The regular Joe or Jane captured on film at a protest are less likely to receive death-threats or face other dangers than a cop whose badge number, car, etc. is visible.
Since when are uniformed police officer's identities in any way protected information? They're public officials engaging in official acts, and absolutely should expect public scrutiny. Whereas the regular citizen is not a public official and is not engaging in official acts.
The standard of behavior should always be *higher* for those placed in positions of authority. If they don't want that responsibility, then they shouldn't have the job of police officer.
If blocking a sidewalk in a public university campus is a crime, then the police may arrest those who block the right of way. That would probably mean lifting and carrying each protester off the sidewalk one at a time, which is a big pain-in-the-ass but not police brutality. If one of them had tried to punch one of the cops or something, then the police would be within their rights to use non-lethal force against the guy who had tried to fight them (but not anybody else). The basic rule for police, though, is that they are not supposed to use force, including pepper spray, against those who aren't physically resisting them. And yes, the rules are the same for abortion clinic protesters too.
If you just plain don't like protesters, your choices are (A) deal with it and accept it as a part of living in a free country, or (B) move to a country that doesn't have freedom of assembly as part of its highest law of the land - which means you're outside of the US, the EU, the British Commonwealth countries, or most anywhere else with a semblance of political freedom.
Consider a much more clear and present danger than terrorism: drunk driving. It kills 11,000 people (including 3000 people who aren't the drunk driver) and costs approximately $115 billion worth of damage every year. That's roughly 1 9/11's worth of non-drunk-driving victims, 1.5 Hurricane Katrinas, and another 8000 drunks on top of that, every single year. But because it's something that happens at a rate of few dozen a day, we don't notice it as much (unless, of course, it's you or somebody you love who got caught up in it).
Imagine what might happen if we spent as much time and resources stopping drunk driving as we did stopping terrorist attacks.
I've often wondered who Anthony Weiner ticked off, too. I should point out that the picture that caused the entire scandal was not something that actually showed his face, so it's quite possible what actually happened was that somebody hacked his phone, put an image of some guy's weiner and sent it to a believable and pretty young woman (who might also have been on payroll), who then went to the news media.
Here's a funny story about that: So there was this project conceived by convicted felon Adm John Poindexter called Total Information Awareness which basically amounted to spying on the Internet, including the activities of all Americans, on a mass scale. This generated a fair amount of outrage, particularly among left-wing civil libertarians, and in 2003-4 then Senator Russ Feingold and Senator Wyden were able to organize a defunding of the program... which basically got renamed and continued on as before with hardly more than a change of name.
They're both kinda correct, and the reason is that they're focused on different sorts of rights.
The American right is trying to take away the ability to get an abortion, to organize a union, to communicate and travel freely without being spied on by the US government, to use recreational drugs, and to protest in any meaningful way.
The American left is trying to take away the ability of just anybody to own deadly weapons, to make contracts or sales that they consider harmful to the overall economy (particularly involving labor), to pollute the water and air, and in some cases to see anything really disturbing.
Different people care about different sets of those, and that's the kind of thing that determines where you sit on the political spectrum.
It might be better to work for a co-operative or a non-profit, but they are often low-pay.
See, here's why I don't do that: Those organizations are drawing from the funds of people who believe in the cause they're (at least theoretically) promoting. Whereas by going into the for-profit world and sending a bunch of the proceeds in the direction of the co-operatives or non-profits, I'm taking funds from people who don't agree with me and putting them towards causes I agree with, which is what actually helps those causes.
I'm surprised nobody brought up this case: John T Williams (warning - rather disturbing footage)
A guy shuffles across the screen at 0:58. We hear Officer Birke yell at Williams to stop, then at 1:15 he issues an order to drop the knife Williams is carrying, and at 1:21 he opens fire. He never once identified himself as police. The officer was not charged, because he claimed that what was going on off-screen was that Williams was turning in a way that could threaten Birke. This is despite plenty of countering evidence: most of the shots went into Williams' back, eyewitnesses disagreed with Birke's assessment of the situation, and there was some evidence that Birke had it in for Williams due to past police encounters.
and readability really just depends on what you are used to..
That's not entirely true. Readability has a lot to do with signal to noise. For instance, compare this:
if a == b:
c = do_something()
to this:
IF a% == b% THEN
c$ = doSomething() END IF
They say the exact same thing, but the first example has gotten rid of "THEN" and "END IF", which add no meaning whatsoever and mostly just clutter things up. Which is why, IMHO, Python is a superior language to Basic.
In its heyday, PHP's advantages were: (A) It was easy to learn for those familiar with Javascript because it was kinda similar syntax, and (D) Extremely easy integration with HTML and Javascript, especially once mod_php got going. Basically, it meant that any damn fool web designer could throw a little bit of PHP into their pages.
Once people started writing more complicated stuff in it, its limitations became clear, which is a big part of why its popularity is waning in favor of Python, Ruby, etc for web development.
That last one isn't that hard to explain though, because it usually comes down to a few factors: A. Easy to learn. B. Easy to write highly functional code. C. Easy to understand what someone else has written. D. Easy to integrate with components written in other languages (via libraries, compatibility layers, etc)
Getting all of those right is more art than science.
Nutritionists and doctors will study a female digestive tract, but they won't from that assume that all a woman is capable of doing is digesting food. When looking at sportswomen (e.g. Kristine Lilly), yes, their stats are part of the picture, but no sportswriter limits themselves solely to somebody's stats. And when you do business with women, you of course focus on the business relationship, but as you get to know her you'll learn about lots of things that have nothing to do with business (e.g. her kids, her favorite books). And when you look at women as a political bloc, it's obviously a study of trends in women's political outlooks (typically attempting to make them seem identical to the author's outlook), and is no more dehumanizing than saying "most working class white men vote Republican - why is that?"
In other words, in all those cases, the person understands that they're dealing with one aspect of a woman's life. Whereas with booth babes, some men assume treat them like their sexual characteristics are the only aspect of a woman's life. Even strippers and porn actresses (I've known a few before they went into the business) have friends and lives that aren't about sex.
Reagan was willing to raise taxes, to work with Tip O'Neal to hammer out agreements and then stick to those agreements, and to use deficits to increase government hiring during an economic crisis. With a record like that, there's no way Reagan could have won the nomination for president in 2012. Although Reagan could have probably beaten that (by modern GOP standards) pinko Richard Nixon or that clearly socialist Dwight Eisenhower.
Mitt Romney is just yet another sleazebag politician out for more money and power. If he's for getting rid of the NLRB, it's not out of any ideology, but because he thinks his stock holdings will do better without the fear of workers doing silly things like wanting to be paid enough to eat.
If they really want a good defense, they need to try this:
"Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense! Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major technology company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!"
To quote from a previous generation's songwriter, Tom Paxton:
I learned our government must be strong. It's always right and never wrong. Our leaders are the finest men. And we elect them again and again. That's what I learned in school today. That's what I learned in school.
That comic is preposterous - Odin would go after the guy with a spear, not an axe. (Evidence: It is so written in the Eddas that the spear is Odin's signature weapon in much the same way as Thor is associated with war hammers)
Slashdot Mirror
"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is vigilant and stops a guy who helps people buy what appear to a layperson to be the health products they want to buy but are in fact frauds that will kill them or do nothing while getting them to avoid proper treatment."
I'm not sure which is right, because I don't have the facts of the case, but it's quite possible that what the FDA is doing is a good thing.
Unless the other carrier follows suit, how on Earth do they expect to keep customers?
Odds are good that they're trying to see if other carriers follow suit. Back in the days before the Internet, 1 airline would raise prices at 4:45 PM on Friday afternoon, see if the other airlines raised their prices to match over the weekend, and if they didn't then lower the prices back down at 8:15 AM on Monday morning. Legally, that's not price fixing, even though in practice it is.
George Carlin said it best:
Cuz ya do know folks, Ya do know, livng in this country you know, that every time you're exposed to advertising you realize once again that America's leading industry, America's most profitable business is still the manufacturing, packaging, distribution, and marketing of BULLSHIT. High quality, Grade A, Prime cut, Pure American BULLSHIT.
And the sad part is, Most people seem indoctorinated to believe that bullshit only comes from certain places, certain sources. Advertising, politics, salesmen, not true. Bullshit is everywhere, bullshit is rampant. Parents are full of shit, teachers are full of shit, clergymen are full of shit, and law enforcment people are full of shit, this entire country is completely full of shit, and always has been, from the Declaration of Independance, to the Constitution, to the Star Spangled Banner, it's really nothing more than one BIG steaming pile of red white and blue all Americian BULLSHIT.
The regular Joe or Jane captured on film at a protest are less likely to receive death-threats or face other dangers than a cop whose badge number, car, etc. is visible.
Since when are uniformed police officer's identities in any way protected information? They're public officials engaging in official acts, and absolutely should expect public scrutiny. Whereas the regular citizen is not a public official and is not engaging in official acts.
The standard of behavior should always be *higher* for those placed in positions of authority. If they don't want that responsibility, then they shouldn't have the job of police officer.
If blocking a sidewalk in a public university campus is a crime, then the police may arrest those who block the right of way. That would probably mean lifting and carrying each protester off the sidewalk one at a time, which is a big pain-in-the-ass but not police brutality. If one of them had tried to punch one of the cops or something, then the police would be within their rights to use non-lethal force against the guy who had tried to fight them (but not anybody else). The basic rule for police, though, is that they are not supposed to use force, including pepper spray, against those who aren't physically resisting them. And yes, the rules are the same for abortion clinic protesters too.
If you just plain don't like protesters, your choices are (A) deal with it and accept it as a part of living in a free country, or (B) move to a country that doesn't have freedom of assembly as part of its highest law of the land - which means you're outside of the US, the EU, the British Commonwealth countries, or most anywhere else with a semblance of political freedom.
It's not always Syfy that pulls this kind of thing: if you don't believe me, ask Joss Whedon.
Consider a much more clear and present danger than terrorism: drunk driving. It kills 11,000 people (including 3000 people who aren't the drunk driver) and costs approximately $115 billion worth of damage every year. That's roughly 1 9/11's worth of non-drunk-driving victims, 1.5 Hurricane Katrinas, and another 8000 drunks on top of that, every single year. But because it's something that happens at a rate of few dozen a day, we don't notice it as much (unless, of course, it's you or somebody you love who got caught up in it).
Imagine what might happen if we spent as much time and resources stopping drunk driving as we did stopping terrorist attacks.
I've often wondered who Anthony Weiner ticked off, too. I should point out that the picture that caused the entire scandal was not something that actually showed his face, so it's quite possible what actually happened was that somebody hacked his phone, put an image of some guy's weiner and sent it to a believable and pretty young woman (who might also have been on payroll), who then went to the news media.
Here's a funny story about that: ... which basically got renamed and continued on as before with hardly more than a change of name.
So there was this project conceived by convicted felon Adm John Poindexter called Total Information Awareness which basically amounted to spying on the Internet, including the activities of all Americans, on a mass scale. This generated a fair amount of outrage, particularly among left-wing civil libertarians, and in 2003-4 then Senator Russ Feingold and Senator Wyden were able to organize a defunding of the program
to inelegance gathering overseas
Man, do we have to outsource everything? If I need to gather inelegance, I can just go to my local Wal-Mart.
They're both kinda correct, and the reason is that they're focused on different sorts of rights.
The American right is trying to take away the ability to get an abortion, to organize a union, to communicate and travel freely without being spied on by the US government, to use recreational drugs, and to protest in any meaningful way.
The American left is trying to take away the ability of just anybody to own deadly weapons, to make contracts or sales that they consider harmful to the overall economy (particularly involving labor), to pollute the water and air, and in some cases to see anything really disturbing.
Different people care about different sets of those, and that's the kind of thing that determines where you sit on the political spectrum.
Gentlemen: A toast to wives and girlfriends - may they never meet.
It might be better to work for a co-operative or a non-profit, but they are often low-pay.
See, here's why I don't do that: Those organizations are drawing from the funds of people who believe in the cause they're (at least theoretically) promoting. Whereas by going into the for-profit world and sending a bunch of the proceeds in the direction of the co-operatives or non-profits, I'm taking funds from people who don't agree with me and putting them towards causes I agree with, which is what actually helps those causes.
I'm surprised nobody brought up this case: John T Williams (warning - rather disturbing footage)
A guy shuffles across the screen at 0:58. We hear Officer Birke yell at Williams to stop, then at 1:15 he issues an order to drop the knife Williams is carrying, and at 1:21 he opens fire. He never once identified himself as police. The officer was not charged, because he claimed that what was going on off-screen was that Williams was turning in a way that could threaten Birke. This is despite plenty of countering evidence: most of the shots went into Williams' back, eyewitnesses disagreed with Birke's assessment of the situation, and there was some evidence that Birke had it in for Williams due to past police encounters.
and readability really just depends on what you are used to..
That's not entirely true. Readability has a lot to do with signal to noise. For instance, compare this:
if a == b:
c = do_something()
to this:
IF a% == b% THEN
c$ = doSomething()
END IF
They say the exact same thing, but the first example has gotten rid of "THEN" and "END IF", which add no meaning whatsoever and mostly just clutter things up. Which is why, IMHO, Python is a superior language to Basic.
Also, anybody still wondering why the "viral" clauses of the GPL that require changes to be GPLed are important?
That's not 8 characters!
In its heyday, PHP's advantages were: (A) It was easy to learn for those familiar with Javascript because it was kinda similar syntax, and (D) Extremely easy integration with HTML and Javascript, especially once mod_php got going. Basically, it meant that any damn fool web designer could throw a little bit of PHP into their pages.
Once people started writing more complicated stuff in it, its limitations became clear, which is a big part of why its popularity is waning in favor of Python, Ruby, etc for web development.
That last one isn't that hard to explain though, because it usually comes down to a few factors:
A. Easy to learn.
B. Easy to write highly functional code.
C. Easy to understand what someone else has written.
D. Easy to integrate with components written in other languages (via libraries, compatibility layers, etc)
Getting all of those right is more art than science.
That's simply nonsense.
Nutritionists and doctors will study a female digestive tract, but they won't from that assume that all a woman is capable of doing is digesting food. When looking at sportswomen (e.g. Kristine Lilly), yes, their stats are part of the picture, but no sportswriter limits themselves solely to somebody's stats. And when you do business with women, you of course focus on the business relationship, but as you get to know her you'll learn about lots of things that have nothing to do with business (e.g. her kids, her favorite books). And when you look at women as a political bloc, it's obviously a study of trends in women's political outlooks (typically attempting to make them seem identical to the author's outlook), and is no more dehumanizing than saying "most working class white men vote Republican - why is that?"
In other words, in all those cases, the person understands that they're dealing with one aspect of a woman's life. Whereas with booth babes, some men assume treat them like their sexual characteristics are the only aspect of a woman's life. Even strippers and porn actresses (I've known a few before they went into the business) have friends and lives that aren't about sex.
Mitt Romney, (aka Ronald II)
Reagan was willing to raise taxes, to work with Tip O'Neal to hammer out agreements and then stick to those agreements, and to use deficits to increase government hiring during an economic crisis. With a record like that, there's no way Reagan could have won the nomination for president in 2012. Although Reagan could have probably beaten that (by modern GOP standards) pinko Richard Nixon or that clearly socialist Dwight Eisenhower.
Mitt Romney is just yet another sleazebag politician out for more money and power. If he's for getting rid of the NLRB, it's not out of any ideology, but because he thinks his stock holdings will do better without the fear of workers doing silly things like wanting to be paid enough to eat.
If they really want a good defense, they need to try this:
"Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense! Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major technology company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!"
To quote from a previous generation's songwriter, Tom Paxton:
I learned our government must be strong.
It's always right and never wrong.
Our leaders are the finest men.
And we elect them again and again.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school.
That would be quite a surprise, given all the stuff Bradbury wrote about Mars.
That comic is preposterous - Odin would go after the guy with a spear, not an axe. (Evidence: It is so written in the Eddas that the spear is Odin's signature weapon in much the same way as Thor is associated with war hammers)