> Whether you believe this as historical fact or not, > what isn't in dispute is that the God of Abraham is > worshipped as the one true God not only in the > Christian Bible but also in both the Torah of the > Jews and in the Koran of the Muslims.
That is true. But it does not mean much.
To draw a stark contrast, the followers of David Koresh likely said that they worshipped the God of Abraham as the one true God too. It does not guarantee the theology of that cult.
And besides, there are tons of differences between the Bible and the Koran.
For instance, the punishment for adultery in this world according to the Koran (execution, IIRC by stoning), and according to Jesus, as said directly to the adulteress: "go thy way, and sin no more" . The punishment for blasphemy in the Koran (execution), and according to Jesus: nothing in the world, and in the world to come: "every blashphemy against the Father and [Jesus] will be forgiven man..."
The Koran also claims the Jesus never died (instead that an illusion put someone else on the cross -- Judas IIRC).
In the Bible, the old testament makes claims that the messiah would come while the temple still stood, and would be executed wrongly. The new testament makes it clear Jesus died, and rose, and if that this did not happen, Christianity is vain.
As I said, I wasn't offering a direct solution to the poster's problem.
>.. encoding and decoding to/from MPEG-2 would cause a massive amount of latency. Do you have numbers? It is tens of milliseconds or hundreds? Also, do you have any latency figures for hardware encoding/decoding -- for instance, as done by TV tuner card with a hardware MPEG2 compressor?
> By only sending the changes to a display, far greater bandwidth savings can be had. MPEG is variable bit rate. The stream for that time period would simply compress better and it's bit-rate would reduce a lot.
> there is essentially no solution that would work for gaming, > since there can not be any latency at all between keypresses/mouseclicks > and the corresponding action happening. That's the point of my post - compressing the desktop would work for gaming, video, 2-D desktop, anything! Latency would also be amenable to faster processors and ASICs.
> (BTW, DVD is actually [352|704|720] x vres where vres is 480 for NTSC, 576 for PAL.) That's why I bundled it under SVGA (800x600)
Forgive the brevity - I lost an earlier reply while editing.
I am not a US citizen. I don't live in the US.
Yes, there are the three entities in the US constitution.
Also, I should have used the term "clerks" or "bureaucrats", and not "peon" (which had a different meaning to what I had in mind). So I should have said:
You are right in that Amendment 10 restricts the powers of Congress. The faulty exegesis I was talking about your exegesis on "general welfare of the United States" where you see three categories in Amendment 10, and apply them to Sec 8, Clause 1. If the authors of the constitution intended to narrowly define the "United States" to mean federal bureaucrats and soldiers, and the term "the welfare of the United States" to mean keeping those bureaucrats and soldiers paid --- regardless of context --- well, those authors would have done so, wouldn't they?
The term "United States" means a country consisting of people first and foremost; one cannot simply replace all occurences of the term "United States" with "federal government".
> The rest of your paragraph is an utter fabrication Of course, it being sarcasm...
>... > a complete red herring.
Perhaps you could sort it out by affirming that suffering of the sort I "fabricated" _never_ did occur in the US: -- that prior to the federal schemes which you allege to be unconsitutional, the states _always_ took reasonable steps to ensure "general welfare" of their peoples. -- that the hungry never starved, the sick were given at least a modicum of medical care. -- that _all_ states _always_ had both political will and the required money for this
> Even matters such as the definition of marriage are > decided at the state level and always have been. Yes. IIRC, the US congress has the power to define test for equivalency of records between states, which could be another way to stop gay marriages. Instead of a law, I think a constitutional amendment is being proposed to ensure no prospect of a court challenge remains.
> I have to say I find your last sentence in that paragraph confusing. Seen in it's context, it's clearly rhetorical.
> You seem to be saying >.... > it's alright to do things that are un-Constitutional No.
> The love of money is the root of all evil. I agree that money is just a tool. You see that Christ whom I quoted said "the love of..."
Lastly, if you tend to believe medicare and social security are unconstutional, why don't you appeal to the courts and see if they back your interpretation of the constitution. Don't beg the question yourself.
With today's computers, is it possible to MPEG encode an entire 1600 x 1200 video + sound and pipe it wirelessly to a client with a MPEG decoder chip? I've got some strange (as in rosy) figures here.
Here is the supply side of the picture... top of head figures for effective throughput in various wireless standards (including some less-than-standard standards).:
Add another 1 Mbps to demand figures for audio (both directions), keyboard, mouse, and another 1-4 Mbps for network overhead.
I got the second set of numbers while watching a DVD by choosing "display data rate". The HPTV numbers I got by searching google for "HDTV bitrate". Can the rest be extrapolated from these two numbers? If so, it indicates that wireless networks available today could: 1. Non interactively stream HDTV over 54g 2. Interactively stream one high resolution desktop over 54g
Now, some questions:
1. It should be _possible_ for a desktop computer to MPEG-encode the desktop (including acclerated output), but is does anything out there do this? For MS Windows or X-Windows? Can a hardware MPEG encoder on a TV tuner PCI card assist in encoding?
2. Several laptop graphics chips have hardware assistance for DVD decoding - for eg: MPEG motion compensation. Can such hardware be used to assist decoding a higher resolution stream?
Intelligent liars create stories around their situation. To an intelligent liar the lie is the truth, and hence they are not lying.... It is not possible to catch intelligent liars using machine detection.
In other words, if by wishful thinking, you manage to deceive yourself that my post is a really a duck, you not be really telling a lie. And the machine could not catch you. Because you'd be an intelligent liar.
Why don't you try it out then? Let me help you a little: "quack"... "quack, quack"!!!
Strange how reality comes back to trouble you, isn't it?
> It is not possible to catch intelligent liars using machine detection.
Perhaps. Yet, you persumably have no detailed knowledge of this machine. Yet you described the very brain activity it detects (spinning a yarn, to yourself...), then imply it would not detect it.
Also, you lied in your post, to yourself even! And it's quite likely the machine would have detected brain activity consistently with lying as you wrote the post.
It seems to me that interpreting "promote the general Welfare" the way you do opens the door to giving the Federal government the authority to do anything it likes at all, so long as it can be somehow construed to be for the "general Welfare".
Congress does not have "the authority to do anything it likes". Common sense would say that the US constitution must be interpreted as a whole, taking into account the powers it grants and restraints it imposes.
You are right in that Amendment 10 restricts the powers of Congress. The faulty exegesis I was talking about your exegesis on "general welfare of the United States" where you see three categories in Amendment 10, and apply them to Sec 8, Clause 1. If the authors of the constitution intended to narrowly define the "United States" to mean a system of peons and soldiers, and the term "the welfare of the United States" to mean keeping these peons and soldiers paid --- regardless of context --- well, those authors would have done so, wouldn't they?
They didn't. And not only that, knowing they were creating an imperfect instrument, they made the constitution amendable. And it is the _amended_ constitution, and the laws it engenders, that you are bound to. Get used to it.
Our discussion started off about the power to levy taxes. To cut this short, let me emphasize the last sentence of the paragraph you quoted: For instance, the social security program is authorized under the general welfare clause.
Now you object to all federal social welfare schemes. You'd only permit them to occur at the state level. The US would have a patchwork of welfare schemes, reflecting the wonderful diversity of political opinion across the land. And if that's what a state government decided, some regions won't have _any_ schemes at all. If an old sick man in a rural area is too poor to pay for wiring a telephone line to his rural area? Let him stay cut off - no unconstitutional universal access fees! Desperately sick but can't afford to make it to the hospital? Let him die! Makes it to a GP? Sic it to them fatcat doctors! Needs emergency dialysis? Tough - he's not Bill Gates - an asprin is reasonable. Doctor overwhelmed with too many poor sick people? He must treat them all well, all from his pocket, on pain of penalty! But no unconstitutional taxes - rights may be trampled!
I believe social programs are a local matter, you (I would guess) believe otherwise. Not just me. I thank God that your governmentbelieves otherwise too. And it is constitutional.
And where the problems will arise are with those people who can lie. After all a lie is only a lie if the person telling the lie thinks it is. When the person thinks they are telling the truth then the lie is not a lie anymore. Its all relative!
Where I see serious problems with this is when people use it to test for terrorists. They will only catch those people who cannot lie. Those that can lie will pass through with flying colors and bomb everything. Great, I can see the excuses now, "But he was telling the truth..."
Gee, that MRI would probably show your brain glowing away as you wrote this.
The people of the United States established the constitution to promote their general welfare.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Doing a "there are only three types of people in the Bible" type of exegesis on a phrase of the US Constitution does not work. The Constitution is not divinely inspired, it is an imperfect object... otherwise Sec 9 Clause 4 would not be fall prey to Amendment 14. However, there is one sensible interpreation of the governments powers of taxation. While we argue about the powers of Sec 8 Clause 1, the US government could determine that the "welfare of the United States" lies in taking certain steps to promote the welfare of citizens. One such step could be a rebate on federal tax. Or it could be A NEW TAX whose monies go towards welfare schemes like medicare, social security, 911, universal access to telephones, etc etc. And the US government would be fully within it's constitutional powers to make that determination, lay and enforce the necessary taxation, and implement their desired schemes.
The provider (MD, hospital, and staff) takes a loss on that case and takes it out of the general profits.
Then you got out of that dichotomy quite easily...
but tell me, do you agree with your taxes funding medicare?
An optical mouse is essentially an optical camera combined with an onboard DSP chip that processes the stream of images and generates mouse coordinates. So, I got thinking, hey, given enough passes over whatever serves as your mousemat, you could build an image of it!
I remember taking a look at spec sheets for one or two optical mouse sensor chips. The sensor is generally pretty low res (30x30 pixels or something similar),but has an astounding frame rate (500 or 2000 fps or something like that) . However, the IC had a instruction that caused it to dump the full image back to mouse controller (the host PC theoretically). So, as long as nothing in the mouse hardware controller itself stopped it, it would be possible to write an OS mouse driver that accessed these raw images.
Your Constitution Section 8 Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
And this amendment: Article XVI.: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
If your neighbour is ill, but too poor to afford the hospital bill, would you let your taxes foot his bill or leave him to die?
The extreme right is as looney (and cruel) as the extreme left - repeating it's philosophy doesn't make it right.. or even true!
I said: > The constitutions binds you to laws passed by Congress, > and those laws impose taxes on you, and part of proceeds > go to help those poorer than you, as per these laws, > which the constitution binds you to.
He said: > 1. Is regulation of communications necessary and desirable? > 2. If so, does the desired regulation have a constituional standing (Federal, State, local, etc.)? > 3. If so, what would be the extent of such regulation?
You said: > constitution denies Congress the right to pass laws > that don't meet those three criteria he posted.
The US constitution said: "Article. I. Section 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. "
"Section. 8. Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; "
Clause 18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
The US constitution lets the Congress impose taxes on _anything_ it deems necessary for the general welfare of US citizens -- this validates my point you had responded to.
The three criteria the other poster mentioned was about whether the FCC could regulate communication. The US constitution prohibits laws "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" (1st Amendment). However, Congress can tax anything - so it can tax utilization of radio bands. And taxing implies measurement at the very least -- you cannot tax what you do not measure
Now regarding _regulation_ of the radio spectrum - that gets more interesting. Now the radio spectrum is not anyone's private property. i.e. Joe randomguy broadcasting over 10000 sq. km.s on FM band 98.1 has no squatter rights to that utilization. On top of that, the 5th amendment make it clear that so called "eminent domain" can be used to confiscate private property for _public_ use after fair compensation.
Space is a pre-existing resource like land and water. If the government has the power to regulate other resources like land, water, it has the power to regulate the passage of radio waves through space as well (just like it regulates airspace). The specifics of whose laws - state or federal - boil down to whether the US constitution prohibits congress from passing laws outside of the powers explcitly granted it in Sec. 8, but which don't contradict it in any way. (I'm no expert, so real experts could help answer that). It also boils down to whether states assign these powers over to federal control. See:...
"Section. 3. Clause 2: The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State. "
> > The very definition of a country means that some people > > end up "footing the bill" for others less fortunate than them.
> No, the very definition of government is that people get together > to guarantee eachother their fundamental freedoms. What you describe, > that those who work harder should "foot the bill" for those complain > louder, is called looting and mooching
No, I am correct. I said the definition of a country "MEANS...", and and you're talking about what a definition of a country "IS..."_.
Mooching is bad and should be stopped (see my other posts). You may work hard, but there are others who work harder than you, but earn less than you do since they are less fortunate that you are. Being citizens in the same country means you do have to "foot the bill" for them sometimes. You know: social security ? medicare?
A homeless hobo is slashed on the street and then treated in a hospital. Are you fine with having your taxes "foot his bill" ? Do you object, and would rather he bleed to death on the street since he has no money for his treatment?
> It was executed on Bush's watch. It succeeded because > his administration ignored the entreaties by the outgoing > Clinton officials who knew how dangerous the terrorists were,.....whom they had let in a few years ago.
You know as well as I do that the terrorists succeeded because of the groundwork they did for years -- so between the Clinton and Bush administrations, the greater responsibility for 9/11 is on Clinton's administration.
you're doing a "divide and conquer" on things that don't divide well: the constitution, congress, laws, the FCC.
> Please point out where in the United States of America's > Constitution that I am bound by contract...
The constitutions binds you to laws passed by Congress, and those laws impose taxes on you, and part of proceeds go to help those poorer than you, as per these laws, which the constitution binds you to. You want to secede?
> power to regulate was not given by an act of Congress, > but by a decision the FCC itself made. If the FCC overstepped it's lawful mandate, just have Congress or the courts bring it to heel.
> 1. Is regulation of communications necessary and desirable?
Certainly for the wireless spectrum - wireless bandwidth _is_ a finite resource. Even with UWB, someone will start streaming HDTV streams of the survelliance cameras in their property. And then their neighbours will join in. As for regulating content - do you want kiddie porn on the airwaves. No! Is the FCC the right agency to regulate this? Look at the law for an answer.
2. If so, does the desired regulation have a constituional standing (Federal, State, local, etc.)? The laws (and courts, Congress, etc) can answer that. The constitution places citizens under the domain of laws passed by Congress.
> Oh, the same Bush that gave up looking for Osama? No, you've got a different bush in mind.
> The same Bush that is cutting funding for Homeland Security? Perhaps. I don't know much about this, but he has a budget to balance.
> The same Bush that's attempting to negotiate with Iran and North Korea? Yep - that same Bush who's attempting to negotiate with N. Korea, (I didn't know there were direct negotiations with Iran.)
It seems that most citizens are content to let the government provide the services of a wet-nurse, under the guise of "helping those that are less fortunate".
No. If a man can work, and does not, he has no right to be helped. Abuses of the system exist, and must be ended.
But helping those who are less fortunate is the contract that underwrites _every_ nation in the world today. Ever wonder why the government doesn't tax you if your income is under a certain level? Or why medicare exists. Well, it's because the government is trying to help those who are less fortunate that us richer folks - that's why!
GWB calls this compassionate conservatism. I'm happy he has this position.
Unfortunately, a lot of terminally greedy call themselves "conservatives", and hitch a ride on his wagon, but have no love for anyone else outside a small charmed circle of those that love them. These can go to hell.
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> Whether you believe this as historical fact or not,
> what isn't in dispute is that the God of Abraham is
> worshipped as the one true God not only in the
> Christian Bible but also in both the Torah of the
> Jews and in the Koran of the Muslims.
That is true. But it does not mean much.
To draw a stark contrast, the followers of David Koresh likely said that they worshipped the God of Abraham as the one true God too. It does not guarantee the theology of that cult.
And besides, there are tons of differences between the Bible and the Koran.
For instance, the punishment for adultery in this world according to the Koran (execution, IIRC by stoning), and according to Jesus, as said directly to the adulteress: "go thy way, and sin no more" . The punishment for blasphemy in the Koran (execution), and according to Jesus: nothing in the world, and in the world to come: "every blashphemy against the Father and [Jesus] will be forgiven man..."
The Koran also claims the Jesus never died (instead that an illusion put someone else on the cross -- Judas IIRC).
In the Bible, the old testament makes claims that the messiah would come while the temple still stood, and would be executed wrongly. The new testament makes it clear Jesus died, and rose, and if that this did not happen, Christianity is vain.
No, being an athiest makes it more probable and your foolish post confirms it.
Besides, your experiences seem quite secondhand as well.
As I said, I wasn't offering a direct solution to the poster's problem.
.. encoding and decoding to/from MPEG-2 would cause a massive amount of latency.
>
Do you have numbers? It is tens of milliseconds or hundreds?
Also, do you have any latency figures for hardware encoding/decoding -- for instance, as done by TV tuner card with a hardware MPEG2 compressor?
> By only sending the changes to a display, far greater bandwidth savings can be had.
MPEG is variable bit rate. The stream for that time period would simply compress better and it's bit-rate would reduce a lot.
> there is essentially no solution that would work for gaming,
> since there can not be any latency at all between keypresses/mouseclicks
> and the corresponding action happening.
That's the point of my post - compressing the desktop would work for gaming, video, 2-D desktop, anything! Latency would also be amenable to faster processors and ASICs.
> (BTW, DVD is actually [352|704|720] x vres where vres is 480 for NTSC, 576 for PAL.)
That's why I bundled it under SVGA (800x600)
Forgive the brevity - I lost an earlier reply while editing.
...
....
I am not a US citizen. I don't live in the US.
Yes, there are the three entities in the US constitution.
Also, I should have used the term "clerks" or "bureaucrats", and not "peon" (which had a different meaning to what I had in mind). So I should have said:
You are right in that Amendment 10 restricts the powers of Congress. The faulty exegesis I was talking about your exegesis on "general welfare of the United States" where you see three categories in Amendment 10, and apply them to Sec 8, Clause 1. If the authors of the constitution intended to narrowly define the "United States" to mean federal bureaucrats and soldiers, and the term "the welfare of the United States" to mean keeping those bureaucrats and soldiers paid --- regardless of context --- well, those authors would have done so, wouldn't they?
The term "United States" means a country consisting of people first and foremost; one cannot simply replace all occurences of the term "United States" with "federal government".
> The rest of your paragraph is an utter fabrication
Of course, it being sarcasm...
>
> a complete red herring.
Perhaps you could sort it out by affirming that suffering of the sort I "fabricated" _never_ did occur in the US:
-- that prior to the federal schemes which you allege to be unconsitutional, the states _always_ took reasonable steps to ensure "general welfare" of their peoples.
-- that the hungry never starved, the sick were given at least a modicum of medical care.
-- that _all_ states _always_ had both political will and the required money for this
> Even matters such as the definition of marriage are
> decided at the state level and always have been.
Yes. IIRC, the US congress has the power to define test for equivalency of records between states, which could be another way to stop gay marriages. Instead of a law, I think a constitutional amendment is being proposed to ensure no prospect of a court challenge remains.
> I have to say I find your last sentence in that paragraph confusing.
Seen in it's context, it's clearly rhetorical.
> You seem to be saying
>
> it's alright to do things that are un-Constitutional
No.
> The love of money is the root of all evil.
I agree that money is just a tool. You see that Christ whom I quoted said "the love of..."
Lastly, if you tend to believe medicare and social security are unconstutional, why don't you appeal to the courts and see if they back your interpretation of the constitution. Don't beg the question yourself.
Note, this won't answer poster's question but...
:
With today's computers, is it possible to MPEG encode an entire 1600 x 1200 video + sound and pipe it wirelessly to a client with a MPEG decoder chip? I've got some strange (as in rosy) figures here.
Here is the supply side of the picture... top of head figures for effective throughput in various wireless standards (including some less-than-standard standards).
5 Mbps == 802.11b (11 Mbps)
10 Mbps == 802.11b+ (22 Mbps)
20 Mbps == 802.11g (54 Mbps)
35 Mbps == 802.11g Dual channel (108 Mbps)
Here is the demand side: bandwidth figures for MPEG2 video streams.
? Mbps == VGA/TV = 640 x 480 = 307,200
5-10 Mbps == SVGA/DVD = 800 x 600 = 350,000 pixels
? Mbps == XGA = 1024 x 768 = 786,432 pixels
? Mbps == SXGA = 1280 x 1024 = 1,310,720 pixels
? Mbps == UXGA = 1600 x 1200 = 1,920,000 pixels
17-20 Mbps == 1080i HDTV = 1920x1080 = 2,073,600 pixels
Add another 1 Mbps to demand figures for audio (both directions), keyboard, mouse, and another 1-4 Mbps for network overhead.
I got the second set of numbers while watching a DVD by choosing "display data rate". The HPTV numbers I got by searching google for "HDTV bitrate". Can the rest be extrapolated from these two numbers? If so, it indicates that wireless networks available today could:
1. Non interactively stream HDTV over 54g
2. Interactively stream one high resolution desktop over 54g
Now, some questions:
1. It should be _possible_ for a desktop computer to MPEG-encode the desktop (including acclerated output), but is does anything out there do this? For MS Windows or X-Windows? Can a hardware MPEG encoder on a TV tuner PCI card assist in encoding?
2. Several laptop graphics chips have hardware assistance for DVD decoding - for eg: MPEG motion compensation. Can such hardware be used to assist decoding a higher resolution stream?
3. Anyone have bandwidth figures for Ogg theora?
Re-read his post to see how flawed your deduction is. He called _himself_ a "little shit" when he was a brat.
I love my parents. I'm glad they punished me physically when I needed it.
Since I know one, and know a fair bit about the other, I can say that Jehovah isn't the same as Allah.
Since you're an atheist, you most probably trolling on what you know litte about.
And yes, Bush's theology is wrong here - I can see trace it to the tremendous pressure to "fit in".
Intelligent liars create stories around their situation. To an intelligent liar the lie is the truth, and hence they are not lying. ...
... "quack, quack"!!!
It is not possible to catch intelligent liars using machine detection.
In other words, if by wishful thinking, you manage to deceive yourself that my post is a really a duck, you not be really telling a lie. And the machine could not catch you. Because you'd be an intelligent liar.
Why don't you try it out then? Let me help you a little: "quack"
Strange how reality comes back to trouble you, isn't it?
> It is not possible to catch intelligent liars using machine detection.
Perhaps. Yet, you persumably have no detailed knowledge of this machine. Yet you described the very brain activity it detects (spinning a yarn, to yourself...), then imply it would not detect it.
Also, you lied in your post, to yourself even! And it's quite likely the machine would have detected brain activity consistently with lying as you wrote the post.
It seems to me that interpreting "promote the general Welfare" the way you do opens the door to giving the Federal government the authority to do anything it likes at all, so long as it can be somehow construed to be for the "general Welfare".
Congress does not have "the authority to do anything it likes". Common sense would say that the US constitution must be interpreted as a whole, taking into account the powers it grants and restraints it imposes.
You are right in that Amendment 10 restricts the powers of Congress. The faulty exegesis I was talking about your exegesis on "general welfare of the United States" where you see three categories in Amendment 10, and apply them to Sec 8, Clause 1. If the authors of the constitution intended to narrowly define the "United States" to mean a system of peons and soldiers, and the term "the welfare of the United States" to mean keeping these peons and soldiers paid --- regardless of context --- well, those authors would have done so, wouldn't they?
They didn't. And not only that, knowing they were creating an imperfect instrument, they made the constitution amendable. And it is the _amended_ constitution, and the laws it engenders, that you are bound to. Get used to it.
Our discussion started off about the power to levy taxes. To cut this short, let me emphasize the last sentence of the paragraph you quoted:
For instance, the social security program is authorized under the general welfare clause.
Now you object to all federal social welfare schemes. You'd only permit them to occur at the state level. The US would have a patchwork of welfare schemes, reflecting the wonderful diversity of political opinion across the land. And if that's what a state government decided, some regions won't have _any_ schemes at all. If an old sick man in a rural area is too poor to pay for wiring a telephone line to his rural area? Let him stay cut off - no unconstitutional universal access fees! Desperately sick but can't afford to make it to the hospital? Let him die! Makes it to a GP? Sic it to them fatcat doctors! Needs emergency dialysis? Tough - he's not Bill Gates - an asprin is reasonable. Doctor overwhelmed with too many poor sick people? He must treat them all well, all from his pocket, on pain of penalty! But no unconstitutional taxes - rights may be trampled!
I believe social programs are a local matter, you (I would guess) believe otherwise.
Not just me. I thank God that your government believes otherwise too. And it is constitutional.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Doing a "there are only three types of people in the Bible" type of exegesis on a phrase of the US Constitution does not work. The Constitution is not divinely inspired, it is an imperfect object... otherwise Sec 9 Clause 4 would not be fall prey to Amendment 14. However, there is one sensible interpreation of the governments powers of taxation. While we argue about the powers of Sec 8 Clause 1, the US government could determine that the "welfare of the United States" lies in taking certain steps to promote the welfare of citizens. One such step could be a rebate on federal tax. Or it could be A NEW TAX whose monies go towards welfare schemes like medicare, social security, 911, universal access to telephones, etc etc. And the US government would be fully within it's constitutional powers to make that determination, lay and enforce the necessary taxation, and implement their desired schemes.Then you got out of that dichotomy quite easily...
but tell me, do you agree with your taxes funding medicare?
An optical mouse is essentially an optical camera combined with an onboard DSP chip that processes the stream of images and generates mouse coordinates. So, I got thinking, hey, given enough passes over whatever serves as your mousemat, you could build an image of it!
I remember taking a look at spec sheets for one or two optical mouse sensor chips. The sensor is generally pretty low res (30x30 pixels or something similar),but has an astounding frame rate (500 or 2000 fps or something like that) . However, the IC had a instruction that caused it to dump the full image back to mouse controller (the host PC theoretically). So, as long as nothing in the mouse hardware controller itself stopped it, it would be possible to write an OS mouse driver that accessed these raw images.
Here...
.. or even true!
Your Constitution
Section 8 Clause 1:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
And this amendment:
Article XVI.:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
If your neighbour is ill, but too poor to afford the hospital bill, would you let your taxes foot his bill or leave him to die?
The extreme right is as looney (and cruel) as the extreme left - repeating it's philosophy doesn't make it right
> What "groundwork"? The actual plan wasn't especially
> complicated, it didn't need any elaborate planning.
There's the small matter of "learning to fly".
I said:
> The constitutions binds you to laws passed by Congress,
> and those laws impose taxes on you, and part of proceeds
> go to help those poorer than you, as per these laws,
> which the constitution binds you to.
He said:
> 1. Is regulation of communications necessary and desirable?
> 2. If so, does the desired regulation have a constituional standing (Federal, State, local, etc.)?
> 3. If so, what would be the extent of such regulation?
You said:
> constitution denies Congress the right to pass laws
> that don't meet those three criteria he posted.
The US constitution said:
"Article. I.
Section 1.
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. "
"Section. 8.
Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; "
Clause 18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
The US constitution lets the Congress impose taxes on _anything_ it deems necessary for the general welfare of US citizens -- this validates my point you had responded to.
The three criteria the other poster mentioned was about whether the FCC could regulate communication. The US constitution prohibits laws "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" (1st Amendment). However, Congress can tax anything - so it can tax utilization of radio bands. And taxing implies measurement at the very least -- you cannot tax what you do not measure
Now regarding _regulation_ of the radio spectrum - that gets more interesting.
Now the radio spectrum is not anyone's private property. i.e. Joe randomguy broadcasting over 10000 sq. km.s on FM band 98.1 has no squatter rights to that utilization. On top of that, the 5th amendment make it clear that so called "eminent domain" can be used to confiscate private property for _public_ use after fair compensation.
Space is a pre-existing resource like land and water. If the government has the power to regulate other resources like land, water, it has the power to regulate the passage of radio waves through space as well (just like it regulates airspace). The specifics of whose laws - state or federal - boil down to whether the US constitution prohibits congress from passing laws outside of the powers explcitly granted it in Sec. 8, but which don't contradict it in any way. (I'm no expert, so real experts could help answer that). It also boils down to whether states assign these powers over to federal control. See:...
"Section. 3.
Clause 2: The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State. "
> > The very definition of a country means that some people
> > end up "footing the bill" for others less fortunate than them.
> No, the very definition of government is that people get together
> to guarantee eachother their fundamental freedoms. What you describe,
> that those who work harder should "foot the bill" for those complain
> louder, is called looting and mooching
No, I am correct. I said the definition of a country "MEANS...", and and you're talking about what a definition of a country "IS..."_.
Mooching is bad and should be stopped (see my other posts). You may work hard, but there are others who work harder than you, but earn less than you do since they are less fortunate that you are. Being citizens in the same country means you do have to "foot the bill" for them sometimes. You know: social security ? medicare?
A homeless hobo is slashed on the street and then treated in a hospital. Are you fine with having your taxes "foot his bill" ? Do you object, and would rather he bleed to death on the street since he has no money for his treatment?
> > Also, 9/11 was finalized on Clinton's watch.
...whom they had let in a few years ago.
> It was executed on Bush's watch. It succeeded because
> his administration ignored the entreaties by the outgoing
> Clinton officials who knew how dangerous the terrorists were,..
You know as well as I do that the terrorists succeeded because of the groundwork they did for years -- so between the Clinton and Bush administrations, the greater responsibility for 9/11 is on Clinton's administration.
Enought said.
you're doing a "divide and conquer" on things that don't divide well: the constitution, congress, laws, the FCC.
...
> Please point out where in the United States of America's
> Constitution that I am bound by contract
The constitutions binds you to laws passed by Congress, and those laws impose taxes on you, and part of proceeds go to help those poorer than you, as per these laws, which the constitution binds you to. You want to secede?
> power to regulate was not given by an act of Congress,
> but by a decision the FCC itself made.
If the FCC overstepped it's lawful mandate, just have Congress or the courts bring it to heel.
> 1. Is regulation of communications necessary and desirable?
Certainly for the wireless spectrum - wireless bandwidth _is_ a finite resource. Even with UWB, someone will start streaming HDTV streams of the survelliance cameras in their property. And then their neighbours will join in.
As for regulating content - do you want kiddie porn on the airwaves. No! Is the FCC the right agency to regulate this? Look at the law for an answer.
2. If so, does the desired regulation have a constituional standing (Federal, State, local, etc.)?
The laws (and courts, Congress, etc) can answer that. The constitution places citizens under the domain of laws passed by Congress.
> You have that backwards (Score:0) ...by Anonymous Coward
What is this, a convention of foolish anonymous cowards?
While you're talking on about the economy, perhaps someone ought to remind you that two wars took place in his presidency.
> Oh, the same Bush that gave up looking for Osama?
No, you've got a different bush in mind.
> The same Bush that is cutting funding for Homeland Security?
Perhaps. I don't know much about this, but he has a budget to balance.
> The same Bush that's attempting to negotiate with Iran and North Korea?
Yep - that same Bush who's attempting to negotiate with N. Korea, (I didn't know there were direct negotiations with Iran.)
> Can you honestly say that the world is better now than it was when Clinton was in office?
Yes.
Also, 9/11 was finalized on Clinton's watch.
It seems that most citizens are content to let the government provide the services of a wet-nurse, under the guise of "helping those that are less fortunate".
No. If a man can work, and does not, he has no right to be helped. Abuses of the system exist, and must be ended.
But helping those who are less fortunate is the contract that underwrites _every_ nation in the world today. Ever wonder why the government doesn't tax you if your income is under a certain level? Or why medicare exists. Well, it's because the government is trying to help those who are less fortunate that us richer folks - that's why!
GWB calls this compassionate conservatism. I'm happy he has this position.
Unfortunately, a lot of terminally greedy call themselves "conservatives", and hitch a ride on his wagon, but have no love for anyone else outside a small charmed circle of those that love them. These can go to hell.
> ASSES HANDED TO YOU BY G.W.??!?!
Fool: I am a GWB supporter.
Reread my post and understand - it is correct.
Here's a caution...
I have a dual head setup using a CRT and an LCD, and the combination does _not_ work well together.
My LCD is brighter due to it's backlight, while my CRT is blurrier. Moving my gaze between screens causes a nasty context switch to my eyes.
> Diplomacy will be the new defense.
Osama and gang will be happy to know this. Thank God Bush won.