If I can remember all the way back to the original post for a moment -- what does your response have to do with the safety concern that was central to it?
You mention finishing the road system because it's a "shambles." Are you saying that'll make it safer? You mention special testing and regulation systems for heavy vehicles. (I don't understand what "compulsory" school buses would accomplish, or even what it really means.) You propose toll roads to address funding problems. Are toll roads safer? You'd like limits on diesel engines, and I can't help but agree -- London in July and August, phew. But that's more of an environmentalist suggestion, not a suggestion for the road system per se.
What does all this have to do with the original post's reasons for supporting rigid laws for motorists? Wasn't there something about the high rate of mortality being comparable to 747s crashing with alarming regularity?
I'm a (fairly) responsible, fully paid up and accountable motorist. I'm not your problem NOW, and I won't be in the future whether there's a nanny-chip or not.
People like that never hit pedestrians, then, or collide with other cars? I fit the same categories, but I was almost side swiped twice this morning during my 4-minute commute by people who don't understand the right of way at a four-way stop. Or had you considered that other people can hit you, too?
most large organizations are not funded by
the government, and do not strap men and
women to tons of explosives and try to get
them back without any danger to the
astronauts or the people of Earth.
No -- but they do manufacture and distribute pharmaceuticals, run power plants, build and maintain power grids, contract security out for our airlines, build the cars we all use, and so on, with all the safety (and environmental) implications of how they go about doing so affecting basically everyone, US citizen or not.
If a cereal company turns out a cereal based on sunflowers, and if a certain percentage of people in the US have severe sunflower allergies they aren't aware of, the number of lives at risk is significantly greater than seven. Seems like a silly example -- except it's real.
Not to dismiss your point -- the physics of a NASA launch are a heck of a lot more demanding than the physics of puffing rice for a breakfast cereal. But anyone who's worked in a corporation will recognize something here.
This reminds me of sports fans, only obviously it's much more serious and real and consequential with NASA.
A guy across the cube divide from me here rants about his favorite Major League team not trying hard, having bad morale, being a bunch of overpaid, soft millionaires, and so on. He's a Red Sox fan. From back in the day, when I followed baseball, I could suggest six or seven much more curious opinions about what's ailed them over the years -- Fenway and the "Devil's Theory of Park Effects" being one of my favorites -- but he'd much rather blather on about how the whole team just doesn't care. Sure, guy. How many people who made it to the highest level in professional sports have you met? They just don't want to compete, huh? No fire in the belly, I guess.
God, what a barge of cliches people trot out to explain complex systems and events. They used to have the right stuff, but now they don't -- we just need to encourage that can-do attitude. And so on. You'd think curiosity would be more appealing than this sleepwalker's version of things, but I guess attributing laziness and self-interest to others can be pretty reassuring to your average Joe.
You remember.. the people who don't believe in evolution? Or stem cell research? Or cloning?
Good joke, but the Christian Science Monitor does an okay job of reporting science topics. It's sure above the level of typical popular media, leaving alone Fox News's special "They didn't land on the moon because NASA is the government" division. Glance at CSM's coverage of this fossil find. Hardly the whacko creationist extreme.
Contrast this situation with something like HIPAA, the massive act that protects the privacy of health information. More complex issues there -- health records do need to get shared in some situations, but you need to restrict the sharing to the right situations in a very fluid setting. HIPAA takes a lot of criticism as a bureaucratic nightmare, but it's being taken way seriously by a very powerful industry.
Meanwhile the self-regulation model seems to have left Acxiom open to a problem at one of its clients -- it was a former employee of a client who filched the data.
Second, the theft was an inside job. The suspect, now in police custody, was an employee with legitimate access to the information. It amazes me that a such a company would have such lax security as to allow an insider to browse supposedly private data at will.
Actually it was "a former employee of an Acxiom client." Not exactly an inside job for Acxiom -- sounds more like the problem was really at the client's end?
The U.S. health insurance and medical "industries" are seriously under the gun with this sort of thing, getting well ahead of the working world generally. I have tangential contact with some substance abuse and behavioral health businesses, and it's absolutely unreal the security they have within their organizations. "Need to know" doesn't start to describe the levels of security. They're serious.
Medicine is doing it under the threat of HIPAA, the massive new law that protects patient privacy among many other things. The government really did regulate an iffy situation into a much safer one; traditional models of sharing patient information based on professionalism and so on just didn't hack it in the new world of data warehousing and so on.
You'd think the banking industry would've taken the same precautions out of self-interest -- but then if I read this right Acxiom is a database company they contract with. (One case where the government's regulatory presence seems to have established some standards that protect consumers better than a private industry's self-interest? HIPAA has always seemed like a bureaucrat's dream to me, but seeing this...)
Oh, and how cute is this?
She says the alleged hacker and stolen data are in police custody in Cincinnati.
No such thing as data in custody, newsie; once it's out, it's a feral cat.
The big difference with Segway compared to bike, in my impression, is that it can stop... Well, of course a bike can stop too, but you have to put your foot to the ground then and go to "stop mode" so to say. With Segway there's no separate stop mode...
If that's the big advantage, I'm thinking it's not worth the difference in coin. Never once in riding a bike have I said to myself "Now, to enter stop mode." Nor do I necessarily think the "lean back" method of stopping is better than a clear control. Ask W. Bush.
(Where'd you learn about bikes, by the way -- on episodes of the Flintstones? "Put your foot to the ground"??)
...with bikes... stopping and then having to accelerate is a real bummer, especially if it's uphill. With motorized vehicles it's much less so (especially if there are no gears to worry about) since there's no extra effort involved.
In the future we're going to heave our vast, spongy bodies onto Segways, hoist our leaf blowers, and go out to pick up the yard. You're right, the comparison really is to a wheelchair, isn't it?
The constitutional issue wasn't as clear as you're imagining. We're talking about Dale vs. the BSA? That case got to the Supreme Court. It was a 5-4 ruling there, too, split down the usual schism on the court. They overturned a New Jersey ruling that had gone the other way. How "clearly" constitutional was that? Closer than "clearly," surely.
As for the attempted "destruction" of the BSA, the BSA put me and a lot of other decent people in a real hot seat, and they got what they let themselves in for. If they didn't want to take heat from me, they could avoid humiliating my kids' friends and their parents in order to appease big, conservative funding sources like the Mormon church. How should I explain to two little "tiger scouts" that their parents aren't allowed to be leaders because, while they're much more willing (and able) than the alternatives, they're morally wrong because of the sorts of people they are? These are churchgoing people, in a big way. Next to the ACLU in that case, the BSA were rank yellow cowards. They had a threat to their funding and they wet themselves over it. "Morally straight" organizations have more backbone than that, in my book.
I prefer a little more control since the ACLU is so broad.
Okay, I'll accept that -- but as I said, it's a tough thing: the ACLU is by definition going to be backing points of view that are far afield from anything popular, right? And sometimes it's going to be protecting those against "common sense" positions that are much more popular. If you "target" donations you run the risk of slanting the organization's activity toward much softer cases. I'll accept the risk you're worried about.
What utter PR hacks these people are. First TIA, complete with its bizarre, pyramid beams-are-probing-you departmental logo.
Having had their hands slapped on that one, they instead resort to the lovely "Matrix" acronym -- perhaps (you think?) thinking that it'd be catchy with all those kids who saw the movie... Note to spooks: to the kids who saw the movie, this acronym will not seem cool, it'll just seem unbelievably scary. Criminy.
Best stick to "Patriot" something-or-other. That's always good. Red white and blue for the logo this time... With the people in the image depicted in nifty flight suits. Ah, soothes the worry.
I for one won't give money to an organization who uses it to harass the boy scouts of america rather than protect free speech.
Whereas I, for another variation, withdrew from all fundraising for the scouts after they went out of the way to harass my lesbian friends who just wanted to be den leaders for their two little boys. In my book the ACLU had the kids' interests at heart more than the scouts did, on that one...
there are reasons why the ACLU isn't popular.. they have a let's piss everyone off attitude.
The ACLU is largely about defending unpopular speech, in a lot of different veins. That's what you're identifying as their "let's piss everyone off" attitude. You expected them to only defend the popular points of view, is that it?
...honestly-- we did a Palm App for Sundance a while back, and there is a definite slant to things there...
Remind me again -- where are the movies that aren't "slanted"? 'Cause I'm watching my share of mainstream movies, and they're full of cool fighter pilots named "Rafe" and a lot of crappy romantic dialog. Pretty dull and stereotypical, you know? Sundance is just a different POV from the commercial one, but it's not more of a POV, not really.
Hows jogging, or any other impact sport, with your ipod?... Thats what I thought....
They plain don't skip, and at any health club, or jogging around any of Minneapolis's lakes, you'll see a few iPods jostling along just fine. My friend here at work practices racquetball wearing his, if you want another "impact sport." He got it for his long commutes, and keeps a bunch of books on it for that, but he plays music on the court.
You must not jog, and you don't have an iPod. Your sig is about not theorizing without data, but you're doing just that.
"Ignorance and incuriosity are soft pillows, but only for the hard-headed."
-- Montaigne
With USB storage, you can be virtually assured that wandering up to a strange computer will allow you to load the files. Firewire isn't common enough for that to be a safe assumption.
The iPod's also USB 2 compatible, yes? (Not sure I'd love to be synching 10 gigs of mp3s at USB 1 speeds.)
OMG!!! Because ALL 50,500 current employees and let's-say-15,000 past employees and all future employees at MSFT are EVIL!!!!
Who said that? Other than you, I mean?
The post I read pointed out that the person dissing Apple's DRM happened to have two different past business interests that call his objectivity into question. Is this a real complaint, or a spin job? That's a fair-minded question.
As a reader, I want to know when the guy arguing that roadside assistance trucks are communism at its worst happens to run a tow truck company. (Think it's a funny example? We had a MN state legislator who made that argument on the Huose floor, and who owned big stock in such a company.) Doesn't mean I think tow companies are evil; just means we want to know if someone's got a hidden motive, 'cause it helps us weigh the evidence.
Life ain't that simple, and "states rights" is largely a principle of convenience for parties that aren't in power at the federal level, if you look back at our history.
As far as the U.S. revolution goes, there's an element of truth to the comparison -- but I suggest you read something like "The First American" to get a sense of the complexity of the real confict there. There were political conflicts over the role of the Pennsylvania assembly that don't fall into your neat categories at all, not at all. (Had to do with the Royal charters given the Penn family.) And, of course, the whole idea of "taxation without representation" is exactly about the Americans not having a say in the national parliament.
Another response mentions civil rights, during which "States Rights" became a pro-segregation stance. That had roots in the Civil War. The wishful idea that the Civil War was about states trying to defend themselves against the odious power of the federal government has been established in the South for a while now. Hardly true. Under Buchanan, a much more sympathetic President, they objected to the other states' right to not cooperate with their runaway slave laws; how does that agree with the states rights position, again? National policy toward new states, and the resulting future balance of power at the federal level, was where the action was at. The reason the South took up the "states rights" banner -- the reason people buy this story even today -- was because they'd lost the battle at the federal level, not out of any great principle to do with local rule.
Again -- if the other guys are in power in the white house or both federal legislative bodies, you want to protect your ability to resist them locally. Has more to do with checks and balances than with any grand principle. Our current Republicans supposedly loved this "local rule" principle of yours, but now that they're a majority in both federal houses are they doing anything about it for states with Democratic governors?
The White House says the new system, the Web at whitehouse.gov/webmail, is an effort to be more responsive to the public and offer the administration "real-time" access to citizen comments.
Why would you do this? Because given the overwhelming number of e-mails that come in, you can't process it and get it into a database with any "meta"-info attached. This way you let your users organize it for you, would be how the IT people sold the change. Then you really do have a better sense of the layout of all the mail you're getting, and you really do know more about what people think.
Not to say that this isn't incompetence on the part of the Bush folks. Anyone with a clue about PR would know the multi-page form that starts with stuff like "Do you Agree or Disagree with our beloved Kim Jong Il?" or "Are you a donor?" would be a mistake. Even if the Web guys told them they needed to use a revised front end to sort stuff, they should've realized how that form would read. In particular, they really needed to maintain the perception that every note got read -- to blow that off in any way just looks awful. The IT people had the same blindspot for that one -- ever decide to call an 800-line instead of using a tech support form you weren't sure would ever get responded to?
So this speaks to the blinders of both IT people and the Bush regime, sure -- but it probably was an honest try to address the volume of mail that comes in. I worked at the Ford Presidential Library for a while, and they've still got boxes and boxes, and shelves and shelves, of letters people sent abot pardoning Nixon -- categorized as pro and con, and that's about it.
(What they need is the text grinders to do the sorting automagically -- but wait, wouldn't that cost serious tax dollars?)
Okay, so we've got this proposal -- only that -- to make uploading to p2p networks a felony. What other deeply serious offenses on the list of felonies can possibly compare to the societal damage caused by file sharing?
In Alaska, felonies are described as "serious offenses, for which the sentence can include imprisonment for a year or more." The six classes, in Alaska, include:
Murder in the first degree.
"Unclassified" felonies, including second-degree murder, attempted murder, selling heroin to a minor, and kidnapping.
Felony sexual offenses -- including rape and statutory rape.
Class A felonies: manslaughter, armed robbery, arson with risk of physical injury, selling heroin to adults, and firt-degree assault.
Class B felonies: unarmed robbery, theft over $25,000, selling cocaine or pot to a minor, burglary in a dwelling, bribery, perjury, second-degree assault, etc.
Class C: negligent homicide, burglary not in a dwelling, vehicle theft, repeat drunk driving, and bootlegging.
If only we didn't know that "bootlegging" in that last class has to do with alcohol, there'd at least be one example of a felony that sounded remotely like "letting someone copy a song for free." But... nope.
One of the qualities of a working justice system is that punishments are proportionate. This bill violates that in spades. Why not let them chop off our mouse hands, you know?
First off, GPS is a military thing that civilians have piggybacked on.
Secondly, those freeloading, "mooching" foreigners have started developing their own GPS systems, and the US has actually balked at this happening. Out of passing curiosity, why do you think that's happening? (Careful not to concentrate on this question too hard -- you don't want cognitive dissonance to blow any noggin gaskets.)
Remind me to try to sell you something sometime. You've bought a world view that's based on ridiculously oversimple "government is bad!" rhetoric. I'd place money that you have no idea what your real, individual tax burden is, but that doesn't seem to keep you saying they take a third. You're offering ten bucks a month for GPS when, say, the whole of NASA very likely doesn't get that much of your tax dollar -- they take about $1 out of every $1000 in the federal budget, to give you some idea how that works out. That's one lavish GPS system. I'd love to be a used car salesman when you walk through the door...
Feeding the trolls, I know, but Hello -- for the rest of us, those aren't mutually exclusive options. It isn't "save lives or protect the environment," as stark oppositional choices. And in this case, your black and white ideology is causing you to pile onto a political tactic rather than seeking the truth.
A nice synopsis of the tank types, the flights they were used on, and so on:
The tank being used on Columbia was the older style. NASA has gotten exemptions from the EPA to use the old style tanks and foam. They happened to use an old one on this launch.
"(NASA) said the piece that broke off and hit the wing of the Columbia was PROBABLY THE OLD FOAM, NOT THE NEW, MORE TROUBLE-PLAGUED MATERIAL.
When it had trouble with the replacement foam, NASA applied to the Environmental Protection Agency for an exemption from the CFC ban, saying, 'no viable alternative has been identified.' It gained the exemption in 2001, and still uses that foam in a few spots on the shuttle fleet."
--ANDREW C. REVKIN (NYT 2/6/03)
Meanwhile, astronauts have mentioned the problems with the foam since the earliest days of the program:
During the early missions, astronauts even complained over their cockpit radios during liftoffs about falling white-colored insulation from the external fuel tank hitting the shuttle's windows, according to a 1983 NASA report. It said spray-on foam insulation flying off the external tank could cause significant damage to the shuttle's heat-resistant tiles.
Engineers developed at least two procedures -- shaving foam insulation and venting it with thousands of tiny pinpricks -- to reduce the amount of insulation flying off the external tank.
But NASA stated three years ago that "venting... is only a temporary solution to the problem until a new type of foam can be formulated and applied."
The old foam is still being used.
...After Columbia's first flight in April 1981, NASA engineers said they would have had a difficult time clearing it for flight had they known in advance the insulation breakaways would produce such a debris shower.
NASA's been working on this problem since before the first launch. Gee, it doesn't seem like a stark "environment vs. people" choice they made, does it?
You might want to consider your sources before you start assuming everything falls into the neat little cubbyholes your politics make you think of. Fox "News" has run a "special" claiming that the moon launches were all a big conspiracy; maybe that's not the best source for news about NASA. You think? (Meanwhile do we hear any liberals ranting about this all being Bush's fault? They seem to actually give a crap about the problem, rather than just vying to score faked-up political points.)
Take a look at any carrier Since WWII, and you'll see they're using space awfully well. The slanted deck, the catapults, the system of elevators... it's all crammed in there pretty tightly, and it works.
This doesn't seem to have that same mojo going on. The speakers look to be better next to Apple's, I guess, and that's about as innovative as it gets. It's cheaper. The design is definitely not on the tiBook's level. It even sort of looks like an Osbourne 1, doesn't it?
It's also just a smidge under ten pounds (9.9); the competing Apple 17" tiBook is 6.6 lbs.
My question then was, if e-bay has decided it can't afford to police transactions on its site, isn't it basically letting us pay for that aspect of the service? I mean, we taxpayers do pay the cops' salaries, don't we?
What would be the brick-and-mortar equivalent of this policy? A commercial mall that didn't hire security officers, but instead posted signs with "terms of agreement" on the way in -- and that settled for "security" in the form of responding to all police requests for transaction information?
Among the totally unsupported statements you make:
You'll never solve your ADHD problem if you think of yourself as disabled.
How do you know what helps in getting over it? Is this based on your own experience with the diagnosed condition, or is it just the usual "pick yourself up by the bootstraps" rhetoric from someone who talks tough but has no experience or credibility? (Please, apply to run for office as a law-and-order candidate. We expect this BS from those guys.)
From where I sit, the moment when my best childhood friend admitted her depression and stopped telling herself to just get over it was the moment she started being able to deal with it. Just my experience, man.
Look I've been there... This happens to everyone, not just you,
Really? Is this based on your comprehensive knowledge of human nature, or what? 'Cause I had the naive idea that the ADHD diagnosis was founded on the statistical models underlying the DSM-IV. I'm sure you've read it, based on your sage advice here.
Sure, mental health isn't in the same area as physical medicine -- it is based on these stats models, and it's harder to tease out causal relationships there -- but it's better than "I've been there, I felt lazy in college too." Better by a long shot.
ADHD is not a disease...
Neither is depression, in your glorious opinion. Which, as far as I can tell, is based on nothing other than self-righteousness.
I would like to see some credible evidence before I'll believe that contradictions exist in the Bible.
Your page amounts to a huge number of attempts at apologia for some pretty glaring "contradictions." It doesn't do much of a job with the first item on its list: the different order of the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2. I've seen better tries at that one -- involving the tenses of the verbs, for example.
I guess it's pretty obvious you're reading it all in the original Hebrew and Greek, though, because otherwise, as you say, it'd get to being a total muddle. Good luck with that -- I'm sure it's all perfectly clear with no contradictions at all then...
What planet do you live on, chum? On mine, Hitler killed 20,000,000 people, and Stalin killed 30 to 50,000,000
And you're making the argument that they did so because of the absence of private gun ownership laws. Wow. When did you start repeating the NRA's talking points as if you'd thought of them yourself? It's pretty clear which "planet" you're in orbit of, anyway.
Friend, you honestly need to read some more history. Not as ammunition for your juvenile debate points on Usenet and here -- those are just not worth the effort to cultivate, they're just another redundant flame war jolly on the 'net. Read history to get a sense of how complicated the world is.
It may be that the massive, crippling depression that ripped apart the world economy in the early 20th century had something to do with the way things bounced then, you know? Do you recall how Hoover -- the great believer in non-government intervention -- sent MacArthur in to clean up the "Bonus Army" in Washington D.C.? What sorts of Gun laws did we have back then? Why do you suppose all those former soldiers were camping there, anyway? Do you have any patience at all for the complexity of real life?
Pogroms have occurred against Jews in Europe since well before the government had any modern-style monopoly on deadly force, too. Go figure. There might be a little history left out of your NRA pamphlet, there, chum.
Way to go nuclear without having seen the Music Store, AC.
There are many songs over 7:00 that are available for the $0.99. My point was very simple: the licensing arrangements are inconsistent for the big labels. Apple did bend for them. It doesn't seem like the terms are quite the same for indie labels. Period.
Slashdot Mirror
You mention finishing the road system because it's a "shambles." Are you saying that'll make it safer? You mention special testing and regulation systems for heavy vehicles. (I don't understand what "compulsory" school buses would accomplish, or even what it really means.) You propose toll roads to address funding problems. Are toll roads safer? You'd like limits on diesel engines, and I can't help but agree -- London in July and August, phew. But that's more of an environmentalist suggestion, not a suggestion for the road system per se.
What does all this have to do with the original post's reasons for supporting rigid laws for motorists? Wasn't there something about the high rate of mortality being comparable to 747s crashing with alarming regularity?
I'm a (fairly) responsible, fully paid up and accountable motorist. I'm not your problem NOW, and I won't be in the future whether there's a nanny-chip or not.
People like that never hit pedestrians, then, or collide with other cars? I fit the same categories, but I was almost side swiped twice this morning during my 4-minute commute by people who don't understand the right of way at a four-way stop. Or had you considered that other people can hit you, too?
No -- but they do manufacture and distribute pharmaceuticals, run power plants, build and maintain power grids, contract security out for our airlines, build the cars we all use, and so on, with all the safety (and environmental) implications of how they go about doing so affecting basically everyone, US citizen or not.
If a cereal company turns out a cereal based on sunflowers, and if a certain percentage of people in the US have severe sunflower allergies they aren't aware of, the number of lives at risk is significantly greater than seven. Seems like a silly example -- except it's real.
Not to dismiss your point -- the physics of a NASA launch are a heck of a lot more demanding than the physics of puffing rice for a breakfast cereal. But anyone who's worked in a corporation will recognize something here.
This reminds me of sports fans, only obviously it's much more serious and real and consequential with NASA.
A guy across the cube divide from me here rants about his favorite Major League team not trying hard, having bad morale, being a bunch of overpaid, soft millionaires, and so on. He's a Red Sox fan. From back in the day, when I followed baseball, I could suggest six or seven much more curious opinions about what's ailed them over the years -- Fenway and the "Devil's Theory of Park Effects" being one of my favorites -- but he'd much rather blather on about how the whole team just doesn't care. Sure, guy. How many people who made it to the highest level in professional sports have you met? They just don't want to compete, huh? No fire in the belly, I guess.
God, what a barge of cliches people trot out to explain complex systems and events. They used to have the right stuff, but now they don't -- we just need to encourage that can-do attitude. And so on. You'd think curiosity would be more appealing than this sleepwalker's version of things, but I guess attributing laziness and self-interest to others can be pretty reassuring to your average Joe.
You remember.. the people who don't believe in evolution? Or stem cell research? Or cloning?
Good joke, but the Christian Science Monitor does an okay job of reporting science topics. It's sure above the level of typical popular media, leaving alone Fox News's special "They didn't land on the moon because NASA is the government" division. Glance at CSM's coverage of this fossil find. Hardly the whacko creationist extreme.
Meanwhile the self-regulation model seems to have left Acxiom open to a problem at one of its clients -- it was a former employee of a client who filched the data.
Not enough bureaucratic regulation?
Actually it was "a former employee of an Acxiom client." Not exactly an inside job for Acxiom -- sounds more like the problem was really at the client's end?
The U.S. health insurance and medical "industries" are seriously under the gun with this sort of thing, getting well ahead of the working world generally. I have tangential contact with some substance abuse and behavioral health businesses, and it's absolutely unreal the security they have within their organizations. "Need to know" doesn't start to describe the levels of security. They're serious.
Medicine is doing it under the threat of HIPAA, the massive new law that protects patient privacy among many other things. The government really did regulate an iffy situation into a much safer one; traditional models of sharing patient information based on professionalism and so on just didn't hack it in the new world of data warehousing and so on.
You'd think the banking industry would've taken the same precautions out of self-interest -- but then if I read this right Acxiom is a database company they contract with. (One case where the government's regulatory presence seems to have established some standards that protect consumers better than a private industry's self-interest? HIPAA has always seemed like a bureaucrat's dream to me, but seeing this...)
Oh, and how cute is this?
No such thing as data in custody, newsie; once it's out, it's a feral cat.
If that's the big advantage, I'm thinking it's not worth the difference in coin. Never once in riding a bike have I said to myself "Now, to enter stop mode." Nor do I necessarily think the "lean back" method of stopping is better than a clear control. Ask W. Bush.
(Where'd you learn about bikes, by the way -- on episodes of the Flintstones? "Put your foot to the ground"??)
In the future we're going to heave our vast, spongy bodies onto Segways, hoist our leaf blowers, and go out to pick up the yard. You're right, the comparison really is to a wheelchair, isn't it?
The constitutional issue wasn't as clear as you're imagining. We're talking about Dale vs. the BSA? That case got to the Supreme Court. It was a 5-4 ruling there, too, split down the usual schism on the court. They overturned a New Jersey ruling that had gone the other way. How "clearly" constitutional was that? Closer than "clearly," surely.
As for the attempted "destruction" of the BSA, the BSA put me and a lot of other decent people in a real hot seat, and they got what they let themselves in for. If they didn't want to take heat from me, they could avoid humiliating my kids' friends and their parents in order to appease big, conservative funding sources like the Mormon church. How should I explain to two little "tiger scouts" that their parents aren't allowed to be leaders because, while they're much more willing (and able) than the alternatives, they're morally wrong because of the sorts of people they are? These are churchgoing people, in a big way. Next to the ACLU in that case, the BSA were rank yellow cowards. They had a threat to their funding and they wet themselves over it. "Morally straight" organizations have more backbone than that, in my book.
I prefer a little more control since the ACLU is so broad.
Okay, I'll accept that -- but as I said, it's a tough thing: the ACLU is by definition going to be backing points of view that are far afield from anything popular, right? And sometimes it's going to be protecting those against "common sense" positions that are much more popular. If you "target" donations you run the risk of slanting the organization's activity toward much softer cases. I'll accept the risk you're worried about.
Having had their hands slapped on that one, they instead resort to the lovely "Matrix" acronym -- perhaps (you think?) thinking that it'd be catchy with all those kids who saw the movie... Note to spooks: to the kids who saw the movie, this acronym will not seem cool, it'll just seem unbelievably scary. Criminy.
Best stick to "Patriot" something-or-other. That's always good. Red white and blue for the logo this time... With the people in the image depicted in nifty flight suits. Ah, soothes the worry.
Whereas I, for another variation, withdrew from all fundraising for the scouts after they went out of the way to harass my lesbian friends who just wanted to be den leaders for their two little boys. In my book the ACLU had the kids' interests at heart more than the scouts did, on that one...
there are reasons why the ACLU isn't popular.. they have a let's piss everyone off attitude.
The ACLU is largely about defending unpopular speech, in a lot of different veins. That's what you're identifying as their "let's piss everyone off" attitude. You expected them to only defend the popular points of view, is that it?
Remind me again -- where are the movies that aren't "slanted"? 'Cause I'm watching my share of mainstream movies, and they're full of cool fighter pilots named "Rafe" and a lot of crappy romantic dialog. Pretty dull and stereotypical, you know? Sundance is just a different POV from the commercial one, but it's not more of a POV, not really.
They plain don't skip, and at any health club, or jogging around any of Minneapolis's lakes, you'll see a few iPods jostling along just fine. My friend here at work practices racquetball wearing his, if you want another "impact sport." He got it for his long commutes, and keeps a bunch of books on it for that, but he plays music on the court.
You must not jog, and you don't have an iPod. Your sig is about not theorizing without data, but you're doing just that.
"Ignorance and incuriosity are soft pillows, but only for the hard-headed." -- Montaigne
The iPod's also USB 2 compatible, yes? (Not sure I'd love to be synching 10 gigs of mp3s at USB 1 speeds.)
Who said that? Other than you, I mean?
The post I read pointed out that the person dissing Apple's DRM happened to have two different past business interests that call his objectivity into question. Is this a real complaint, or a spin job? That's a fair-minded question.
As a reader, I want to know when the guy arguing that roadside assistance trucks are communism at its worst happens to run a tow truck company. (Think it's a funny example? We had a MN state legislator who made that argument on the Huose floor, and who owned big stock in such a company.) Doesn't mean I think tow companies are evil; just means we want to know if someone's got a hidden motive, 'cause it helps us weigh the evidence.
Life ain't that simple, and "states rights" is largely a principle of convenience for parties that aren't in power at the federal level, if you look back at our history.
As far as the U.S. revolution goes, there's an element of truth to the comparison -- but I suggest you read something like "The First American" to get a sense of the complexity of the real confict there. There were political conflicts over the role of the Pennsylvania assembly that don't fall into your neat categories at all, not at all. (Had to do with the Royal charters given the Penn family.) And, of course, the whole idea of "taxation without representation" is exactly about the Americans not having a say in the national parliament.
Another response mentions civil rights, during which "States Rights" became a pro-segregation stance. That had roots in the Civil War. The wishful idea that the Civil War was about states trying to defend themselves against the odious power of the federal government has been established in the South for a while now. Hardly true. Under Buchanan, a much more sympathetic President, they objected to the other states' right to not cooperate with their runaway slave laws; how does that agree with the states rights position, again? National policy toward new states, and the resulting future balance of power at the federal level, was where the action was at. The reason the South took up the "states rights" banner -- the reason people buy this story even today -- was because they'd lost the battle at the federal level, not out of any great principle to do with local rule.
Again -- if the other guys are in power in the white house or both federal legislative bodies, you want to protect your ability to resist them locally. Has more to do with checks and balances than with any grand principle. Our current Republicans supposedly loved this "local rule" principle of yours, but now that they're a majority in both federal houses are they doing anything about it for states with Democratic governors?
Why would you do this? Because given the overwhelming number of e-mails that come in, you can't process it and get it into a database with any "meta"-info attached. This way you let your users organize it for you, would be how the IT people sold the change. Then you really do have a better sense of the layout of all the mail you're getting, and you really do know more about what people think.
Not to say that this isn't incompetence on the part of the Bush folks. Anyone with a clue about PR would know the multi-page form that starts with stuff like "Do you Agree or Disagree with our beloved Kim Jong Il?" or "Are you a donor?" would be a mistake. Even if the Web guys told them they needed to use a revised front end to sort stuff, they should've realized how that form would read. In particular, they really needed to maintain the perception that every note got read -- to blow that off in any way just looks awful. The IT people had the same blindspot for that one -- ever decide to call an 800-line instead of using a tech support form you weren't sure would ever get responded to?
So this speaks to the blinders of both IT people and the Bush regime, sure -- but it probably was an honest try to address the volume of mail that comes in. I worked at the Ford Presidential Library for a while, and they've still got boxes and boxes, and shelves and shelves, of letters people sent abot pardoning Nixon -- categorized as pro and con, and that's about it.
(What they need is the text grinders to do the sorting automagically -- but wait, wouldn't that cost serious tax dollars?)
If only we didn't know that "bootlegging" in that last class has to do with alcohol, there'd at least be one example of a felony that sounded remotely like "letting someone copy a song for free." But... nope.
One of the qualities of a working justice system is that punishments are proportionate. This bill violates that in spades. Why not let them chop off our mouse hands, you know?
First off, GPS is a military thing that civilians have piggybacked on.
Secondly, those freeloading, "mooching" foreigners have started developing their own GPS systems, and the US has actually balked at this happening. Out of passing curiosity, why do you think that's happening? (Careful not to concentrate on this question too hard -- you don't want cognitive dissonance to blow any noggin gaskets.)
Remind me to try to sell you something sometime. You've bought a world view that's based on ridiculously oversimple "government is bad!" rhetoric. I'd place money that you have no idea what your real, individual tax burden is, but that doesn't seem to keep you saying they take a third. You're offering ten bucks a month for GPS when, say, the whole of NASA very likely doesn't get that much of your tax dollar -- they take about $1 out of every $1000 in the federal budget, to give you some idea how that works out. That's one lavish GPS system. I'd love to be a used car salesman when you walk through the door...
A nice synopsis of the tank types, the flights they were used on, and so on:
The tank being used on Columbia was the older style. NASA has gotten exemptions from the EPA to use the old style tanks and foam. They happened to use an old one on this launch.
Meanwhile, astronauts have mentioned the problems with the foam since the earliest days of the program:
NASA's been working on this problem since before the first launch. Gee, it doesn't seem like a stark "environment vs. people" choice they made, does it?
You might want to consider your sources before you start assuming everything falls into the neat little cubbyholes your politics make you think of. Fox "News" has run a "special" claiming that the moon launches were all a big conspiracy; maybe that's not the best source for news about NASA. You think? (Meanwhile do we hear any liberals ranting about this all being Bush's fault? They seem to actually give a crap about the problem, rather than just vying to score faked-up political points.)
This doesn't seem to have that same mojo going on. The speakers look to be better next to Apple's, I guess, and that's about as innovative as it gets. It's cheaper. The design is definitely not on the tiBook's level. It even sort of looks like an Osbourne 1, doesn't it?
It's also just a smidge under ten pounds (9.9); the competing Apple 17" tiBook is 6.6 lbs.
My question then was, if e-bay has decided it can't afford to police transactions on its site, isn't it basically letting us pay for that aspect of the service? I mean, we taxpayers do pay the cops' salaries, don't we?
What would be the brick-and-mortar equivalent of this policy? A commercial mall that didn't hire security officers, but instead posted signs with "terms of agreement" on the way in -- and that settled for "security" in the form of responding to all police requests for transaction information?
You'll never solve your ADHD problem if you think of yourself as disabled.
How do you know what helps in getting over it? Is this based on your own experience with the diagnosed condition, or is it just the usual "pick yourself up by the bootstraps" rhetoric from someone who talks tough but has no experience or credibility? (Please, apply to run for office as a law-and-order candidate. We expect this BS from those guys.)
From where I sit, the moment when my best childhood friend admitted her depression and stopped telling herself to just get over it was the moment she started being able to deal with it. Just my experience, man.
Look I've been there... This happens to everyone, not just you,
Really? Is this based on your comprehensive knowledge of human nature, or what? 'Cause I had the naive idea that the ADHD diagnosis was founded on the statistical models underlying the DSM-IV. I'm sure you've read it, based on your sage advice here.
Sure, mental health isn't in the same area as physical medicine -- it is based on these stats models, and it's harder to tease out causal relationships there -- but it's better than "I've been there, I felt lazy in college too." Better by a long shot.
ADHD is not a disease...
Neither is depression, in your glorious opinion. Which, as far as I can tell, is based on nothing other than self-righteousness.
Your page amounts to a huge number of attempts at apologia for some pretty glaring "contradictions." It doesn't do much of a job with the first item on its list: the different order of the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2. I've seen better tries at that one -- involving the tenses of the verbs, for example.
I guess it's pretty obvious you're reading it all in the original Hebrew and Greek, though, because otherwise, as you say, it'd get to being a total muddle. Good luck with that -- I'm sure it's all perfectly clear with no contradictions at all then...
What planet do you live on, chum? On mine, Hitler killed 20,000,000 people, and Stalin killed 30 to 50,000,000
And you're making the argument that they did so because of the absence of private gun ownership laws. Wow. When did you start repeating the NRA's talking points as if you'd thought of them yourself? It's pretty clear which "planet" you're in orbit of, anyway.
Friend, you honestly need to read some more history. Not as ammunition for your juvenile debate points on Usenet and here -- those are just not worth the effort to cultivate, they're just another redundant flame war jolly on the 'net. Read history to get a sense of how complicated the world is.
It may be that the massive, crippling depression that ripped apart the world economy in the early 20th century had something to do with the way things bounced then, you know? Do you recall how Hoover -- the great believer in non-government intervention -- sent MacArthur in to clean up the "Bonus Army" in Washington D.C.? What sorts of Gun laws did we have back then? Why do you suppose all those former soldiers were camping there, anyway? Do you have any patience at all for the complexity of real life?
Pogroms have occurred against Jews in Europe since well before the government had any modern-style monopoly on deadly force, too. Go figure. There might be a little history left out of your NRA pamphlet, there, chum.
There are many songs over 7:00 that are available for the $0.99. My point was very simple: the licensing arrangements are inconsistent for the big labels. Apple did bend for them. It doesn't seem like the terms are quite the same for indie labels. Period.