The reason more individuals take pot shots at Christians is because they are by FAR the majority in this country; almost every single elected representative in Congress is Christian.
No one is threatening the rights of Christian Americans by summarily imprisioning them; the same can't be said for those of the Muslim faith in America. Don't give me the crap about the new rise of secularists in America; take a good hard look at the US Senate/House (Hint: what state is the Senate majority leader from?) and who has more sway there before you start spouting random rebuttals about prayer in schools/pledge of allegiance. After that, think hard about those new evolution stickers.
Besides, there's no need to make fun of Muslims when there's already deep-seated hatred in this country of people from the Middle East who aren't Israeli. In short, it's very different to make fun of a persecuted minority vs. a dominant majority with powerful lobbysts.
You misunderstand the intent of this ruling; did you read the article?
The three-judge appellate court specifically reprimanded a lower court for commenting on the legality of file-sharing in Canada; the issue at hand is whether the recording companies have enough evidence to force ISP's to reveal their users real names, and NOT the legality of file-sharing. All the appellate court said was, "provide us with more evidence than you have now, and we'll reconsider your request." Read the part about the lawsuit being dismissed without prejudice.
This decisions is based entirely on privacy; why should an arbitrary corporation have access to my personal information based on unsubstantiated accusations? The court ruled correctly in requiring a threshold of evidence before forcing ISP's to reveal customer information. Of course you're correct in saying copyright violations are criminal, but that is not the issue here at all. An individual's right to privacy in business dealings (i.e., purchasing broadband) must be weighed against the amount of evidence presented by an accuser; the judges just said the recording industry didn't have enough.
There is no slippery slope. A fundamental part of any civilized society is a social contract (Locke); if an individual in the society chooses to break that contract by comitting a crime, he/she is ostracized from the society. Over the past few hundred years we've codified this into penal codes. Granted, there are injustices in the penal code (i.e. crystallized crack is punished more harshly that powdered crack, but both have the same potency - guess which type of crack minorities have more access to), but overall it's been accepted that you give up your freedom if you break the laws of your society.
Prisoners have no right to privacy, they have no right to free assembly, they have no right to carry arms (this part at least makes sense, right?), and a bunch of other rights that we enjoy as citizens. Now, seeing as how they have no 4th amendment rights, why can't we shackle RFID tags on them? It's not cruel or painful, and it prevents prison riots/prison escapes by letting the guards know where they are. Denying prisoners fundamental rights is part of their punishment and ostracization.
Seeing as how strip searches/metal detectors are already standard practice in jails and have been for decades, I see this as perhaps one of the only USEFUL and legit applications of RFID tags.
Crying foul over non-existent rights violations makes it all the harder for people to take you seriously when actual violations occur (i.e. Guantanomo Bay, secret evidence b/c of national security, etc...).
Btw, the slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy. Look it up on Google sometime.
I heard on NPR the other day that historians/theologians uncovered an original section of the Bible that said "616" was the actual number of the Beast. The "666" thing was a big safu.
I think (616) is the area code to somewhere in Michigan.
You're comparing being a slave to a willful criminal act. That's a horrible comparison; slaves in America were denied their rights almost entirely on the color of their skin - an innate condition they had no control over. A criminal willfully broke the social contract and thus had his rights rescinded; the two are entirely different things.
Criminals DO have less rights that citizens by the nature of their incarceration alone; we've been depriving prisoners of basic rights for as long as we've been incarcerating them. Putting RFID tags around their ankles is no more cruel or unusual than locking up a prisoner in a 6ft x 6ft room by themselves which still happens as regular practice.
According to your analogy, should we accord prisoners the right to privacy as in the 4th Amendment, and also freedom of assembly as in the 1st Amendment?
Assumption #1: God gave us free will. (because he loves us)
Assumption #2: God is omniscient.
Since God already knows all our future actions, we no longer have free-will; al our actions are pre-determined. So humanity's free will and God's omniscience are mutually exclusive; you can't have your cake and eat it too.
----- Now, with that out of the way. I'd have to say I that I agree with you, but still have my doubts During one of the episodes (I finished watching all 13 episodes from the British torrents), he gets set up by the Cylon lady in red who whispers to him; at the end, he's exonerated when he prays to God and agrees to work humbly for the Cylons.
The key thing is, after this, NO ONE, will dare challenge his integrity again. I think at the end of the eps, the Cylon who whispers to him says the same thing. He basically has carte blanche run of the ship, because he's walked through the fire and everyone trusts him.
BUT...the thing is. Why does he need to be a Cylon? He's already capable of wreaking havoc on the humans; he's the VP of the damn colony. A traitor is a traitor, it doesn't matter if he's human or originally a Cylon. Both means serve the same end.
What could the Cylons potentially gain if he was revealed to actually BE a Cylon ?
Verizon has serious problems with their cell phone service, and they're testing for it the wrong way. Verizon has excellent coverage in the SF Bay Area - I can get 5-bars of service almost everywhere I go; I can even sometimes get text messages underground on BART.
The problem Verizon has is capacity; they've over-booked each of their cell phone towers. I'm not sure but I think most CDMA towers for Verizon can handle 80-100 simultaneous calls, and this gets to be a real problem in densely packed metropolitan areas. I get 5-bars of reception, but I can't place any calls, or they get dropped within 1-2 minutes of connecting. Sometimes it takes 2-3 minutes just to connect when I dial. They need to stop this crap about super-coverage when their capacity sucks donkey nuts.
This is making me consider switching over to AT&T, but their "New Every 2" plan is coming up for me soon. Does anyone here have experience in the Bay Area with AT&T service? I used to have them in their TDMA days, but switched to Verizon ~2 years ago.
"I am surprised to see that Cisco settled with them in US court. I expect the company in question, which has phalanxes of lawyers on salary, won't roll over so easily when it comes to defending the domestic market."
Not really.
How well do you think Cisco would perform in the Chinese market if they kept pursuing a domestic lawsuit against a company heavily sponsored by the Party?
All kinds of suprising "inconveniences" in selling their routers inside China might occur if Cisco kept up their USA lawsuit a bit too aggressively.
"I'll put it in StarCraft terms: you're spending your minerals on upgrading your Zealots, and failing to invest in the pylons and tech structures that would allow you to build a whole frickin' fleet of Protoss Carriers."
I've never seen America's entire long-term defense planning reduced down to one sentence about StarCraft.
The problem is that scientists almost unanimously agree that the ballisitic missile defense shield is unworkable in it's current state. The reason that they've "consistently attacked all proposals for strategic defense," is because they won't work, plain and simple. The ONLY test that has ever worked was under a heavily skewed test, where the target's coordinates were GIVEN to the defense missile. If you knew the government was wasting billons of your dollars every year instead of trying to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, would you do nothing?
Ever since the 1980's, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which includes many many professors of physics, materials science, and who have done defense-related research, wrote an open letter to Reagan saying his ICBM Shield is unworkable and a waste of taxpayer money. Nothing has changed since; Bush is still funding billions every year into a project that's scientifically unfeasable. The reason there's been so much of a campaign again the current administration by scientists is plain and simple - the Bush administration is one of the most openly hostile to science administrations there are:
1. Dismissing published/peer-reviewed AIDS studies and promoting people who then teach kids that AIDS might be transmittable through sweat and tears. REVERSING decades of improvements in the Uganda AIDS situation by promoting abstience only education - the UN has issued a strong protest against this as it threatens the lives of millions in the country.
2. Promoting people to the EPA that have no scientific background and were working in the very industries they're supposed to regulate. Repeatedly ignoring global warming studies despite almost unanimous agreement among scientists; care to point to legimate sources that say there're other reasons?
"But in my mind, I'm wondering how registers are "storing" information. Light, to my knowledge, cannot be effectively stored."
That's not an issue here, from what I can tell. The 10 GHz number is modulating light to electrical signals. All the actual storage and processing will be done just as before; you still have your Flip Flops and storing the bits. The only difference here is that instead of copper interconnects, we use light pulses. The benefit of this new technology is that it can be done with normal CMOS fabrication techniques.
Anyone with more experience with this stuff is free to correct/clarify.
Actually I think he has a point there. Have you ever watched Tony Blaire be cross-examined on the floor of the House of Lords? I may dislike his policies, but the guy has amazing oratory skills - he defends his policies and ideas with clarity and coherence. It adds to the public discourse on complex issues. This kind of accountability of the Executive leads to a cleaner and more transparent government.
I *WANT* to see all future US Presidents have to defend themselves in front of the US Senate.
I *WANT* to see GW Bush have to defend himself to cross-examination by opposition parties on the floor of the Senate.
So yeah, I do think there's something the US can learn from British Parliament-style government.
"Living in California, if I so much as breathe a single word about God, I am immeadiately told to cease and desist."
Funny. I live in the Bay Area (one of the most liberal areas in California), and my high school had regular AGAPE Christian groups singing and praying around the flagpost during lunch/brunch/after-school. I also attend Berkeley, probably THE most liberal/secular campus in the United States - no argument there. However, there are people handing out bibles, fliers for student prayer/bible study groups, and a guy who calls himself Joshua with a huge wooden sign that says "REPENT" and yells at random students who pass by to "remember Jesus"...not a single one of these people get harassed or "Cease and Desisted."
Sorry but if people can do this in possibly the most liberal campus in the most liberal part of California, you're making stuff up.
Also, I don't recall a law being passed that says that Christians can't marry/pray in public. How about the numerous southern states that now ban consentual relationships between two adults? It seems like many Evangelical Republicans have forgotten the "limited government" part of their party.
Now the imbalance in the Palestinian/Israeli viewpoints at Berkeley is another story entirely...but I digress.
Actually, adding on another layer of encryption makes the problem worse. From the article summary:
"...the beauty of this approach is that they're not explicitly doing anything to the 3rd party service applications. They're just identifying and tagging their own services, which is within their rights."
The service providers are prioritizing THEIR VoIP traffic; so unless you can encrypt and then mask your VoIP service provider's packets to look like the ISP's, all encryption will do is increase the latency for voice - remember encryption/decryption requires time. The ISP doesn't explicitily delay Vonage's packets, for example, it simply upgrades the QoS priority of their own packets; this conveniently screws over 3rd-party providers like Vonage while not getting the ISP's in legal hot water.
Encryption can protect your 3rd party call from evesdropping, but can only increase latency under this new sneaky scheme.
"The problem with UWB is that it works great for one single device, but not so great once you have 100 million of the buggers running around.There's only so much bandwidth in the whole spectrum, so the "low noise due to wide-band modulation" argument would not hold once millions of these devices got made."
I don't think you really understand the concern here. UWB's main caveat is that it would raise the noise floor, making traditional wireless signals *possibly* harder to decode. UWB has extremely short range, so there would be very few devices within interference range with each other; also since UWB sends data using impulses, traditional TDMA technology (which is used on cell phones - you don't see cell phone carriers supporting only one cellphone per tower, do you?) can be used to have many signal streams in the same area.
"In the software world we're used to super-duper-ultra-wideband spaces: MD5 hashes are a good example."
This is totally irrelevant. MD5 has no bearing to UWB.
"It's the same problem as those RF-excited plasma light bulbs that were all the rage a while ago: the first 10,000 or so work great -- but by the time you deployed 10 of 'em to every household in America, nobody's radio would work any more."
The power spectral density of UWB is extremely low; crappy cd-players and consumer electronics devices can cause more interference than a properly-design UWB transmitter.
Yeah UWB does raise the noise floor for a large swathe of the spectrum (The reason it does this, and I'm referring to the impulse radio version of UWB, is that it transmists using impulses, which is spread out all over the place in terms of the freq. domain). So what you have is a little bit of added noise over all the licensed channels.
Now, how traditional communications channels work is they transmit at higher frequencies, but concentrate their energy in a small slice of that frequency - hopefully the part they're licensed in; the additional noise energy UWB adds is very very minute in a single frequency range (UWB has incredibly low power spectral density by design; the energy of the signal is spread over a huge spectrum) that traditional wireless works in, b/c these guys are blasting all their energy in that one small frequency gap, so the added noise isn't noticable to traditional licensed channels.
I get the feeling that much of the opposition to UWB is more out of paranoia.
No. If you break into an oldy lady's house in Russia, steal her stuff, and murder her you'll be filled with enough self-loathing and guilt to cover ~300 pages in a Russian novel. The preceding 100 pages of you whining about how poor and hungry you are don't help either.
Your story will traumatize high school students' senior years in AP English for centuries afterwards...
"...Apple's actions this week as a potential threat to first amendment rights..."
Look, just because a company wants to shut down some websites, does not make it an automatic 1st Amendment case. The 1st Amendment was originally ONLY meant for the federal government; i.e. Congress can't make laws saying, "no printing bad stuff about any senators." In the early 20th century, the 1st Amendment was "incorporated" so that it also applies to the states (Schenck v. United States); I think it was the first of the Bill of Rights to be incorporated . BUT THAT IS IT. The 1st Amendment does not apply when Apple is suing a few websites over trade secrets/NDA/etc. This case might be corporate censorship through legal intimidation, but it has absolutely nothing to do with a state or federal government abridging free speech.
A good example of a current case that DOES involve the 1st Amendment is the Novak/Valerie spying case where two journalists have been held in contempt because they're refusing to reveal their sources. I think it's a journalist from the Post and the Times.
It's stupid to shout "freedom of speech" whenever anything remotely relating to censorship occurs.
"Ask them what the real difference is between THOSE networks and they really can't tell you."
No, it's actually rather easy to spot the difference between Fox News and the rest of the networks.
The reason I find Fox News offensive is not simply because of any leanings in political spectrum (although I do think it is a right-leaning group); the reason I find Fox News so abhorrent is because it reduces complex issues into single-phrase arguments pundits can shout at each other on TV. I agree that CNN and other shows have these kind of things too - the earliest one I can remember is the McLaughlin Group on PBS I think (not sure). However, Fox News takes it to a new extreme.
Watch Hannity & Colmes sometimes; it makes your stomach turn to see issues that the American people need to see all nuanced facets of reduced to a Left vs. Right shouting match. Guess what, not all issues are as simple as that, and it's a travesty to the public to make it so. Listen to NPR news or the BBC sometimes, and tell me their careful, measured, discussions of the economics of the Social Security problem aren't far more informative and stimulating.
Fox hypes news using constant flag waving and important-sounding music while stripping the public discourse of any semblance of reason. THAT is why I dislike Fox News.
I definitely agree with the parent. Being able to multiply large numbers/tell if they are prime is nice, but it doesn't make you a mathematical genius. He hasn't proven any new theorems or developed a new field; why is he being called a genius?
Perhaps if he can solve a few NP-Complete problem or at least advances the state of mathematics somewhat, then I might reconsider my view. But as far as I know, he contributes nothing to the body of mathematics, besides maybe impressing the occassional person with multiplication.
"How do they manage to escape the scrutiny of the same freedom-minded people, who can not talk about Bush without foam forming on their mouthes?"
Actually, the decision China has taken here, many from the new Right will probably agree with. The justification for the argument was to ban Internet Cafe's around schools because they allow children unfettered access to the internet.
Remember the Communications Decency Act? Rememeber all the speeches by Jerry Falwell about the new electronic medium and it corrupting children? Give half the chance, conservatives in THIS country would ban internet access to pornography too.
Going from the Bush administrations' attempts to delay FOIA stuff from being released to Ashcroft covering up Lady Justice's nipple, this decision seems far more in line with the Neocons than some college hippies.
Btw, the reason GWB hasn't started massive sanctions on China for it's lack of freedom is for 2 reasons: #1 - No Oil #2 - Too much precious trade going back/forth between the two countries. Trade >> Freedom in the eyes of Republicans.
"I guess hatred of America is so strong these days that the Slashbots feel compelled to defend every other government, even some of the most despotic and totalitarian."
Sorry to burst your bubble but many, many Europeans consider America to be a brutal country with inhuman punishment policies. The death penalty, Guantanomo Bay, and the arbitrary detainment of many of their citizens have seriously changed their views of America.
Thus, in the eyes of many of the world, while not as bad as Pol Pot/Cambodia, America is not a beacon of freedom.
You don't get to judge other countries without being judged yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason more individuals take pot shots at Christians is because they are by FAR the majority in this country; almost every single elected representative in Congress is Christian.
No one is threatening the rights of Christian Americans by summarily imprisioning them; the same can't be said for those of the Muslim faith in America. Don't give me the crap about the new rise of secularists in America; take a good hard look at the US Senate/House (Hint: what state is the Senate majority leader from?) and who has more sway there before you start spouting random rebuttals about prayer in schools/pledge of allegiance. After that, think hard about those new evolution stickers.
Besides, there's no need to make fun of Muslims when there's already deep-seated hatred in this country of people from the Middle East who aren't Israeli. In short, it's very different to make fun of a persecuted minority vs. a dominant majority with powerful lobbysts.
You misunderstand the intent of this ruling; did you read the article?
The three-judge appellate court specifically reprimanded a lower court for commenting on the legality of file-sharing in Canada; the issue at hand is whether the recording companies have enough evidence to force ISP's to reveal their users real names, and NOT the legality of file-sharing. All the appellate court said was, "provide us with more evidence than you have now, and we'll reconsider your request." Read the part about the lawsuit being dismissed without prejudice.
This decisions is based entirely on privacy; why should an arbitrary corporation have access to my personal information based on unsubstantiated accusations? The court ruled correctly in requiring a threshold of evidence before forcing ISP's to reveal customer information. Of course you're correct in saying copyright violations are criminal, but that is not the issue here at all. An individual's right to privacy in business dealings (i.e., purchasing broadband) must be weighed against the amount of evidence presented by an accuser; the judges just said the recording industry didn't have enough.
Well yeah, no kidding. The entire justice system is based on that. You're responding to his argument by bringing up an ENTIRELY seperate argument.
If we totally want to avoid guilty convictions, I guess we should abolish prisons then.
There is no slippery slope. A fundamental part of any civilized society is a social contract (Locke); if an individual in the society chooses to break that contract by comitting a crime, he/she is ostracized from the society. Over the past few hundred years we've codified this into penal codes. Granted, there are injustices in the penal code (i.e. crystallized crack is punished more harshly that powdered crack, but both have the same potency - guess which type of crack minorities have more access to), but overall it's been accepted that you give up your freedom if you break the laws of your society.
Prisoners have no right to privacy, they have no right to free assembly, they have no right to carry arms (this part at least makes sense, right?), and a bunch of other rights that we enjoy as citizens. Now, seeing as how they have no 4th amendment rights, why can't we shackle RFID tags on them? It's not cruel or painful, and it prevents prison riots/prison escapes by letting the guards know where they are. Denying prisoners fundamental rights is part of their punishment and ostracization.
Seeing as how strip searches/metal detectors are already standard practice in jails and have been for decades, I see this as perhaps one of the only USEFUL and legit applications of RFID tags.
Crying foul over non-existent rights violations makes it all the harder for people to take you seriously when actual violations occur (i.e. Guantanomo Bay, secret evidence b/c of national security, etc...).
Btw, the slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy. Look it up on Google sometime.
I heard on NPR the other day that historians/theologians uncovered an original section of the Bible that said "616" was the actual number of the Beast. The "666" thing was a big safu.
I think (616) is the area code to somewhere in Michigan.
You're comparing being a slave to a willful criminal act. That's a horrible comparison; slaves in America were denied their rights almost entirely on the color of their skin - an innate condition they had no control over. A criminal willfully broke the social contract and thus had his rights rescinded; the two are entirely different things.
Criminals DO have less rights that citizens by the nature of their incarceration alone; we've been depriving prisoners of basic rights for as long as we've been incarcerating them. Putting RFID tags around their ankles is no more cruel or unusual than locking up a prisoner in a 6ft x 6ft room by themselves which still happens as regular practice.
According to your analogy, should we accord prisoners the right to privacy as in the 4th Amendment, and also freedom of assembly as in the 1st Amendment?
Assumption #1: God gave us free will. (because he loves us)
Assumption #2: God is omniscient.
Since God already knows all our future actions, we no longer have free-will; al our actions are pre-determined. So humanity's free will and God's omniscience are mutually exclusive; you can't have your cake and eat it too.
"This is a terrible, terrible film and it makes me want to weep."
Ouch.
SPOILER for episode 7 or 9, forgot which one.
-----
Now, with that out of the way. I'd have to say I that I agree with you, but still have my doubts During one of the episodes (I finished watching all 13 episodes from the British torrents), he gets set up by the Cylon lady in red who whispers to him; at the end, he's exonerated when he prays to God and agrees to work humbly for the Cylons.
The key thing is, after this, NO ONE, will dare challenge his integrity again. I think at the end of the eps, the Cylon who whispers to him says the same thing. He basically has carte blanche run of the ship, because he's walked through the fire and everyone trusts him.
BUT...the thing is. Why does he need to be a Cylon? He's already capable of wreaking havoc on the humans; he's the VP of the damn colony. A traitor is a traitor, it doesn't matter if he's human or originally a Cylon. Both means serve the same end.
What could the Cylons potentially gain if he was revealed to actually BE a Cylon ?
Verizon has serious problems with their cell phone service, and they're testing for it the wrong way. Verizon has excellent coverage in the SF Bay Area - I can get 5-bars of service almost everywhere I go; I can even sometimes get text messages underground on BART.
The problem Verizon has is capacity; they've over-booked each of their cell phone towers. I'm not sure but I think most CDMA towers for Verizon can handle 80-100 simultaneous calls, and this gets to be a real problem in densely packed metropolitan areas. I get 5-bars of reception, but I can't place any calls, or they get dropped within 1-2 minutes of connecting. Sometimes it takes 2-3 minutes just to connect when I dial. They need to stop this crap about super-coverage when their capacity sucks donkey nuts.
This is making me consider switching over to AT&T, but their "New Every 2" plan is coming up for me soon. Does anyone here have experience in the Bay Area with AT&T service? I used to have them in their TDMA days, but switched to Verizon ~2 years ago.
"I am surprised to see that Cisco settled with them in US court. I expect the company in question, which has phalanxes of lawyers on salary, won't roll over so easily when it comes to defending the domestic market."
Not really.
How well do you think Cisco would perform in the Chinese market if they kept pursuing a domestic lawsuit against a company heavily sponsored by the Party?
All kinds of suprising "inconveniences" in selling their routers inside China might occur if Cisco kept up their USA lawsuit a bit too aggressively.
"I'll put it in StarCraft terms: you're spending your minerals on upgrading your Zealots, and failing to invest in the pylons and tech structures that would allow you to build a whole frickin' fleet of Protoss Carriers."
I've never seen America's entire long-term defense planning reduced down to one sentence about StarCraft.
Apt analogy though.
The problem is that scientists almost unanimously agree that the ballisitic missile defense shield is unworkable in it's current state. The reason that they've "consistently attacked all proposals for strategic defense," is because they won't work, plain and simple. The ONLY test that has ever worked was under a heavily skewed test, where the target's coordinates were GIVEN to the defense missile. If you knew the government was wasting billons of your dollars every year instead of trying to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, would you do nothing?
Ever since the 1980's, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which includes many many professors of physics, materials science, and who have done defense-related research, wrote an open letter to Reagan saying his ICBM Shield is unworkable and a waste of taxpayer money. Nothing has changed since; Bush is still funding billions every year into a project that's scientifically unfeasable. The reason there's been so much of a campaign again the current administration by scientists is plain and simple - the Bush administration is one of the most openly hostile to science administrations there are:
1. Dismissing published/peer-reviewed AIDS studies and promoting people who then teach kids that AIDS might be transmittable through sweat and tears. REVERSING decades of improvements in the Uganda AIDS situation by promoting abstience only education - the UN has issued a strong protest against this as it threatens the lives of millions in the country.
2. Promoting people to the EPA that have no scientific background and were working in the very industries they're supposed to regulate. Repeatedly ignoring global warming studies despite almost unanimous agreement among scientists; care to point to legimate sources that say there're other reasons?
"But in my mind, I'm wondering how registers are "storing" information. Light, to my knowledge, cannot be effectively stored."
That's not an issue here, from what I can tell. The 10 GHz number is modulating light to electrical signals. All the actual storage and processing will be done just as before; you still have your Flip Flops and storing the bits. The only difference here is that instead of copper interconnects, we use light pulses. The benefit of this new technology is that it can be done with normal CMOS fabrication techniques.
Anyone with more experience with this stuff is free to correct/clarify.
Actually I think he has a point there. Have you ever watched Tony Blaire be cross-examined on the floor of the House of Lords? I may dislike his policies, but the guy has amazing oratory skills - he defends his policies and ideas with clarity and coherence. It adds to the public discourse on complex issues. This kind of accountability of the Executive leads to a cleaner and more transparent government.
I *WANT* to see all future US Presidents have to defend themselves in front of the US Senate.
I *WANT* to see GW Bush have to defend himself to cross-examination by opposition parties on the floor of the Senate.
So yeah, I do think there's something the US can learn from British Parliament-style government.
"Living in California, if I so much as breathe a single word about God, I am immeadiately told to cease and desist."
Funny. I live in the Bay Area (one of the most liberal areas in California), and my high school had regular AGAPE Christian groups singing and praying around the flagpost during lunch/brunch/after-school. I also attend Berkeley, probably THE most liberal/secular campus in the United States - no argument there. However, there are people handing out bibles, fliers for student prayer/bible study groups, and a guy who calls himself Joshua with a huge wooden sign that says "REPENT" and yells at random students who pass by to "remember Jesus"...not a single one of these people get harassed or "Cease and Desisted."
Sorry but if people can do this in possibly the most liberal campus in the most liberal part of California, you're making stuff up.
Also, I don't recall a law being passed that says that Christians can't marry/pray in public. How about the numerous southern states that now ban consentual relationships between two adults? It seems like many Evangelical Republicans have forgotten the "limited government" part of their party.
Now the imbalance in the Palestinian/Israeli viewpoints at Berkeley is another story entirely...but I digress.
Actually, adding on another layer of encryption makes the problem worse. From the article summary:
"...the beauty of this approach is that they're not explicitly doing anything to the 3rd party service applications. They're just identifying and tagging their own services, which is within their rights."
The service providers are prioritizing THEIR VoIP traffic; so unless you can encrypt and then mask your VoIP service provider's packets to look like the ISP's, all encryption will do is increase the latency for voice - remember encryption/decryption requires time. The ISP doesn't explicitily delay Vonage's packets, for example, it simply upgrades the QoS priority of their own packets; this conveniently screws over 3rd-party providers like Vonage while not getting the ISP's in legal hot water.
Encryption can protect your 3rd party call from evesdropping, but can only increase latency under this new sneaky scheme.
"The problem with UWB is that it works great for one single device, but not so great once you have 100 million of the buggers running around.There's only so much bandwidth in the whole spectrum, so the "low noise due to wide-band modulation" argument would not hold once millions of these devices got made."
I don't think you really understand the concern here. UWB's main caveat is that it would raise the noise floor, making traditional wireless signals *possibly* harder to decode. UWB has extremely short range, so there would be very few devices within interference range with each other; also since UWB sends data using impulses, traditional TDMA technology (which is used on cell phones - you don't see cell phone carriers supporting only one cellphone per tower, do you?) can be used to have many signal streams in the same area.
"In the software world we're used to super-duper-ultra-wideband spaces: MD5 hashes are a good example."
This is totally irrelevant. MD5 has no bearing to UWB.
"It's the same problem as those RF-excited plasma light bulbs that were all the rage a while ago: the first 10,000 or so work great -- but by the time you deployed 10 of 'em to every household in America, nobody's radio would work any more."
The power spectral density of UWB is extremely low; crappy cd-players and consumer electronics devices can cause more interference than a properly-design UWB transmitter.
Yeah UWB does raise the noise floor for a large swathe of the spectrum (The reason it does this, and I'm referring to the impulse radio version of UWB, is that it transmists using impulses, which is spread out all over the place in terms of the freq. domain). So what you have is a little bit of added noise over all the licensed channels.
Now, how traditional communications channels work is they transmit at higher frequencies, but concentrate their energy in a small slice of that frequency - hopefully the part they're licensed in; the additional noise energy UWB adds is very very minute in a single frequency range (UWB has incredibly low power spectral density by design; the energy of the signal is spread over a huge spectrum) that traditional wireless works in, b/c these guys are blasting all their energy in that one small frequency gap, so the added noise isn't noticable to traditional licensed channels.
I get the feeling that much of the opposition to UWB is more out of paranoia.
No. If you break into an oldy lady's house in Russia, steal her stuff, and murder her you'll be filled with enough self-loathing and guilt to cover ~300 pages in a Russian novel. The preceding 100 pages of you whining about how poor and hungry you are don't help either.
Your story will traumatize high school students' senior years in AP English for centuries afterwards...
"...Apple's actions this week as a potential threat to first amendment rights..."
Look, just because a company wants to shut down some websites, does not make it an automatic 1st Amendment case. The 1st Amendment was originally ONLY meant for the federal government; i.e. Congress can't make laws saying, "no printing bad stuff about any senators." In the early 20th century, the 1st Amendment was "incorporated" so that it also applies to the states (Schenck v. United States); I think it was the first of the Bill of Rights to be incorporated . BUT THAT IS IT. The 1st Amendment does not apply when Apple is suing a few websites over trade secrets/NDA/etc. This case might be corporate censorship through legal intimidation, but it has absolutely nothing to do with a state or federal government abridging free speech.
A good example of a current case that DOES involve the 1st Amendment is the Novak/Valerie spying case where two journalists have been held in contempt because they're refusing to reveal their sources. I think it's a journalist from the Post and the Times.
It's stupid to shout "freedom of speech" whenever anything remotely relating to censorship occurs.
"Ask them what the real difference is between THOSE networks and they really can't tell you."
No, it's actually rather easy to spot the difference between Fox News and the rest of the networks.
The reason I find Fox News offensive is not simply because of any leanings in political spectrum (although I do think it is a right-leaning group); the reason I find Fox News so abhorrent is because it reduces complex issues into single-phrase arguments pundits can shout at each other on TV. I agree that CNN and other shows have these kind of things too - the earliest one I can remember is the McLaughlin Group on PBS I think (not sure). However, Fox News takes it to a new extreme.
Watch Hannity & Colmes sometimes; it makes your stomach turn to see issues that the American people need to see all nuanced facets of reduced to a Left vs. Right shouting match. Guess what, not all issues are as simple as that, and it's a travesty to the public to make it so. Listen to NPR news or the BBC sometimes, and tell me their careful, measured, discussions of the economics of the Social Security problem aren't far more informative and stimulating.
Fox hypes news using constant flag waving and important-sounding music while stripping the public discourse of any semblance of reason. THAT is why I dislike Fox News.
I definitely agree with the parent. Being able to multiply large numbers/tell if they are prime is nice, but it doesn't make you a mathematical genius. He hasn't proven any new theorems or developed a new field; why is he being called a genius?
Perhaps if he can solve a few NP-Complete problem or at least advances the state of mathematics somewhat, then I might reconsider my view. But as far as I know, he contributes nothing to the body of mathematics, besides maybe impressing the occassional person with multiplication.
"How do they manage to escape the scrutiny of the same freedom-minded people, who can not talk about Bush without foam forming on their mouthes?"
Actually, the decision China has taken here, many from the new Right will probably agree with. The justification for the argument was to ban Internet Cafe's around schools because they allow children unfettered access to the internet.
Remember the Communications Decency Act? Rememeber all the speeches by Jerry Falwell about the new electronic medium and it corrupting children? Give half the chance, conservatives in THIS country would ban internet access to pornography too.
Going from the Bush administrations' attempts to delay FOIA stuff from being released to Ashcroft covering up Lady Justice's nipple, this decision seems far more in line with the Neocons than some college hippies.
Btw, the reason GWB hasn't started massive sanctions on China for it's lack of freedom is for 2 reasons:
#1 - No Oil
#2 - Too much precious trade going back/forth between the two countries.
Trade >> Freedom in the eyes of Republicans.
"I guess hatred of America is so strong these days that the Slashbots feel compelled to defend every other government, even some of the most despotic and totalitarian."
Sorry to burst your bubble but many, many Europeans consider America to be a brutal country with inhuman punishment policies. The death penalty, Guantanomo Bay, and the arbitrary detainment of many of their citizens have seriously changed their views of America.
Thus, in the eyes of many of the world, while not as bad as Pol Pot/Cambodia, America is not a beacon of freedom.
You don't get to judge other countries without being judged yourself.