Of course, the issue is much, much more complex, and no one wants to take into consideration the very real economic impacts of taking drastic action to reduce emissions, especially when China and India - forget the EU - are not saddled with the same restrictions.
Of course, even if the US and the EU signed Kyoto and did abide by its stipulations, the impact on global temperatures (provided you believe in anthropogenic global warming in the first place) would be undetectably small. Of course, the US didn't even sign it.
You also brought up an interesting point about China. China has more people than the US and the EU combined. If they get a per capita pollution production of even 50% the average American or European (which they may have already), it's going to make just about anything we can do pointless... short of detonating hundreds of EMPs over all the major cities to return us back to the stone-age.
And by the way, India has about the same amount of people as China, and is trying to develop just as fast.
Nobody is willing to take the necessary steps. To make matters worse, it seems that there has been a resurgence lately of "deniers" (a pop-term describing those who don't believe in anthropogenic global warming and simultaneously comparing them to holocaust deniers). The political forces are butting heads and getting nothing accomplished.
Good. The sooner, the better. I can't wait to see the consumer-whores freak out over not being able to dodge sales tax at the expense of their local communities! Bring back local businesses. Make Net businesses compete on the same level as their brick-and-mortar counterparts.
Thank you, my luddite friend.
Internet retailers are more efficient and usually pay their employees more than local businesses. They require fewer employees and serve more customers.
The thing is: The middleman shouldn't exist in the first place, if you think about it. The internet has middlemen competing and makes their role in the process less and less prevalent.
I used to work for one. I made 20% more than the average best buy employee starting, and I had nothing more than a high school diploma. I worked my way up to supervisor and could have even had health benefits if I had actually been full time. The place I worked for, in spite of all this, pays its employees less than most warehouses.
This new tax will help some local businesses. However, for the most part, the internet will continue to replace these businesses even on a 'level playing field'.
And on a slightly less related note: Is anyone else annoyed that the government pursues any possible source of revenue? People do not want to pay taxes, and the government makes more than enough money to do everything it should be doing. The solution to the budgetary crises across the US should be obvious: Cut spending. I guess it's a lot harder to shrink government than to steal more money from the people. Sales taxes are especially bad because they disproportionately tax the poor (poor pay a higher % of their income to a sales tax than others do).
The majority of the stories are either "Bush/Cheney/The US/Halliburton is evil" or "OMG panic the environment is in trouble." I'm thinking the real purpose of this list is to say "here's stuff I think is really important but most people don't. Since I don't think it was featured enough, I'll going to just claim it was censored by news networks."
I totally agree. The last one of these 'censored stories of XXXX' I read was actually good though, so I read this one.
Total waste of my time. Speaking of wasted, sometimes I play a drinking game with lengthy news articles. Every time I read something that even I could discern as incorrect, I had a shot. I'm on my second bottle of scotch after reading this one.
Isn't that going to get laughed right out of the courtroom? I mean sure that level of pedanticism is tolerated in some forums, but this is a court of law. Surely the judge is going to say a dignified version of "What the fuck are you on? Get the fuck out of here."
The display can only show about a quarter million colors. This is not millions. Therefore, when Apple promised "millions", they were lying.
The reason dithering is bad is because many people (including myself) can see dithering quite easily and it looks, frankly, cheap and terrible.
By dithering the output on their displays, they have virtually assured graphics professionals cannot use their products for certain tasks without plugging in an external display. Again, they said they display 'millions' of colors, and therefore dithering shouldn't be present.
I was waiting for slashdot's take on this, obviously they've chosen to word the article in a very pro-Apple way. In other articles I've read, it points out that Apple makes no mention of dithering on their site, and suppresses the fact that their monitors are only 6bit, not 8bit. Also, the/. article doesn't mention that dithering can actually cause headaches in some people (like myself).
Again, 8 bit monitors do exist, and it's a reasonable expectation that if the monitor is said to display 'millions' of colors, it must be 8bit. 6bit displays, such as Apples, cannot display millions of colors, and as such, they must be advertised as such.
I've heard from others that most retailers selling laptops with 6bit displays offer them as having 'millions of colors'. My preemptive response is that others doing it doesn't make it right.
My girlfriend recently bought a macbook. Luckily, she doesn't notice the dithering. However, as I said before, the thing gives me a headache after a while.
They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
Why not? Because losing 1 social 'war' is bad enough.
I do agree with the part of your post about punishing pirates, but I don't think it goes far enough. I think we should incarcerate them for 10 years in a windowless room, then suddenly let them walk out of prison, but as they walk out there's a trap door and they fall into a gigantic meat grinder which slowly grinds their flesh and bones into cat food over the course of a couple days. Then, take the 'Soylent Pirate' to market and resell it as animal feed to recoup the losses of the **AA!
Hell, it's less cruel and capricious than the DMCA!
Has anyone considered that allowing someone to 'role play' or 'express' their desires, no matter how taboo, in a virtual world, might lessen real-world activity? Any studies on this?
There's an interesting and amusing documentary called "I am a sex addict."
Not to spoil the ending, but the guy eventually goes to a sex addict support group for men, and they all agree that indulging in their fetishes only made the problem worse--made it easier to go one step further.
Regardless, I don't think child porn should be illegal. Molesting children and creating these images is already a crime (as it should be), these images are merely evidence that should be followed to its source.
The FBI already spends *MOST* of its resources tracking down child molesters (predominantly online). I'd say we've got the problem pretty well under control.
It's just silly and another anti-discrimination agenda that makes people across both party lines and ideologies "feel good" about themselves when really, they're just making the economy less efficient.
I think this law also "discriminates" against those of us with good genes by making us pay higher insurance premiums than we deserve. We can't change the genes we were born with! Why make us suffer?!
The problem is: Insurance companies should be able to discriminate based on anything you're comfortable with them knowing. If you have a genetic propensity for heart disease (like I do), you should pay more unless you take good care of your body (like I do). If my insurance company weren't so nervous about discriminating against fat people, my rates would be much lower, since the chances of a person with my lifestyle getting seriously ill are much lower.
Even if my insurance company could discriminate based on genetics, my flawed genes wouldn't raise my rates. This is because the actuarial tables would still weigh in my favor due to the life I have chosen to lead.
If it's not worth it for you to take care of yourself, fine; don't. I shouldn't have to pay for it because you don't, though.
Thank God it's now "evil" to smoke instead of a "lifestyle choice" (which obesity is slowly becoming; if it doesn't become a 'disease' first), otherwise they wouldn't offer discounts to non-smokers. Oddly enough, I didn't stop smoking until I started paying my own health insurance. Funny how that works out.
This reminds me of the ADA Episode of Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t!. Nothing government can do will make people equal to one another, and it's stupid to try. Moreover, most of your intrinsic flaws (which everyone has) can be overcome well enough to succeed.
As a side note, this article is an editorial, which is really unnecessary.
Though its "inefficient" (with only ~15% of PharmCo budgets going towards research), it's still got more money in it than the pharmaceutical research in the university system. Universities have the right to patent and license the drugs they create, by the way.
Big Pharma does not pay for the FDA. You and I do.
Wrong. The Pharm companies fund the testing of their own drugs. It's usually north of a billion per drug.
You call these companies "middlemen" because the universities find the exact chemical problem to solve and then the pharm companies take it from there. You forget, obviously, that the latter is much more impressive and expensive to do. Actually, it's many times more expensive.
The strange part is, if we'd opened the patents on AIDS drugs 10 years ago all over the world, these new ones wouldn't exist. Somehow you're trying to say that it's different now?
There was a great Frontline on this issue which you obviously need to see.
The number of years added to the lives of the Brazilians who get this drug at a reduced cost will be subtracted several times over from future AIDS victims who would have otherwise have had better drugs available due to the added research dollars.
In short, adding 10 days more life now = subtracting 20 days more life in the future (arbitrary but realistic figure). People who want to ban patents on drugs are either selfish or stupid, because they are basically killing future generations by choking off pharmaceutical research dollars.
Oh, and by the way, this is not the first time Brazil has done this with AIDS medications. I'm not sure why it's getting press now... Just thought I'd add that.
Honestly, the populations in Brazil who would most benefit from AIDS medication probably wouldn't have the scratch to pay the full price. However, this WILL lead to other countries doing the same thing. If enough of them do, people will stop investing in pharmaceutical research because there wont be any ROI.
What the drug companies should be able to do is sell these to Brazil at cost, as a form of price discrimination. However, if that were to happen, AIDS victims in the US and other countries who could otherwise afford to pay the real cost of these meds would simply fly to Brazil, pick up their prescriptions, and fly back (which would be cheaper).
By saying that these drugs are "counterfeit", the American drug companies can keep these cheap drugs from coming back to the United States at these low prices, which would be disastrous for drug companies, and indeed, future generations afflicted with AIDS. In truth, the drug companies may not care that Brazil does this, though they'll certainly try and keep 'rich' western countries from doing the same thing.
Whether the companies are good or evil is irrelevant, because they have no choice but to sell these drugs at the same price in every country. Just look at what the [relatively] rich Americans do: buy from Canada and Mexico. If we made this practice illegal (which I think is wrong, but bare with me here), only then could we see the true colors of American Pharma. They probably would be 'giving it away' in the 3rd world nations, if for PR if nothing else.
Somebody has to pay for the future of pharmacology, and the U.S. looks to be it.
The campaign didn't negotiate with him, and ended up promising him $10,000.
Correction: Apparently, the campaign didn't offer him any money, but said that they would negotiate in an apparent effort to stall for time while they were really negotiating with myspace to take the page.
Also, Joe's contact list (with over 160,000 names, now down to 140k) was not lost. It was transfered to a blank account. So it appears even myspace sympathized with Joe's position.
I list of 160,000 loyal obama supporters to ask for contributions from is probably worth the $50k Joe was asking.
That guy named a site after a well-known person and attempted to hold it ransom for much more than it was worth.
It was clearly marked as a "fan site.".. The price tag the guy set on it was to pay him back for the 160,000 user community he had formed which even myspace said he had a right to. He didn't want to stop doing the page--he would've kept doing the fan site for free. He asked for cash because, since they were forcing off his own project anyway, he thought he should be compensated for what he had lost.
The campaign didn't negotiate with him, and ended up promising him $10,000. This happened briefly before they strong-armed myspace to step in. It is not for you to say how much he can sell his OWN stuff for. Judging from the amount of work he put into it, and that he didn't want to give it up, it's obvious to me that he was not asking for too much.
The guy didn't have a right to Obama's name. He also didn't have a right to force himself into the campaign as he attempted.
He wasn't doing anything like that. He made the page and started it from the ground up and was an avid supporter of Obama, just trying to do his part. Over time, the community got huge under his care, and Obama's campaign stepped in and said "hey, nice work, gimme!".
Note that only the link - barack obama's name - got transferred, the idiot still has his page.
What? No. They transfered it to another URL and dropped his friends. All myspace did was transfer his text to another account. He lost EVERYTHING of value.
Losing a URL to a website, as any idiot can piece together, often ends an online community. This community was not created by the obama campaign. They could've setup an "official" page with a different URL and left this poor guy alone. Instead, they hijacked myspace's terms of service and fear of law suits to steal this guy's URL and destroy all his work.
The site was clearly labeled "unofficial," and the entire community knew it as such. The campaign simply wanted the address. Personally, I think it hurt them more than their new URL could ever help.
He deserves what he got. If you don't want your site to be transferred, don't name it after a public figure. If this had been a registrar issue the result would have been no different.
Registrar issues are vastly different than free myspace accounts. He wasn't even posing as Obama, so there's no legal issue here. Obama does not own the myspace.com/barackobama url any more than he owns en.wikipedia.com/Barack_Obama.
If I were Joe Anthony, I'd sue the Obama campaign if I could.
NeoOffice is an independently developed version of OpenOffice.org 2.1 which runs on Mac OS X natively and without the need for X11. I've been using it for years.
And it's buggy as hell. I've been using it to write reports for end-of-term papers due recently. The only reason I was even able to stand it is its remarkable recovery features for when it crashes... and oh, does it ever crash. Version 2.0 wouldn't let me save or quit; I'd simply force-quit it and recover every document I ever wrote every time I restarted it. Version 2.1 fixes this issue, but freezes out keyboard and mouse input into the program whenever you do a find/replace.
On the other hand, I have a legal license of M$ office but for some reason it wont let me enter in my license code because of the trial version pre-installed on my Mac. No matter how many times I install it, it references the hidden preferences file (which I haven't had time to locate) and determines that it's the now-expired trial version. So I guess you can take your pick of the problems.
They just switched to Intel chips less than two years ago! There are still a few apps here and there that are still dependent on Rosetta. And Apple is supposed to just pick up a new microchip like a teenager picks up a new favorite song every other week? Intel's not the only one that would be pissed (and rightly so!), but we customers, as well. I don't want to deal with another switch, and neither does anyone else. Plus, I don't think Apple wants to throw its years of work away after only two very successful years.
The switch from PPC to intel was a far greater feat than going from Intel to AMD would be. In fact, I doubt there'd be a single software issue... apart from the lack of EFI (which I'm sure Apple could wrestle away from Intel at some outrageous price).
The problem is, AMD doesn't make anything Apple really wants. Apple needs good laptop processors, of which Intel make the best. Intel's doing better in the quad-core arena which is obviously where Apple wants to go.
This isn't just about buying AMD, it's also about switching processor suppliers--to processors which are currently not as good as Intel. They may be cheaper, but most macs require fast and cool processors due to their form-factor, or require the fastest available processors. AMD dominates in neither category.
I'm a huge AMD fan, my last PC (before I dumped it and my G5 to get a Mac Pro) was an AMD as were all my PCs before that. I fully admit, however, that currently Intel is winning the war.
Ultimately, there isn't anything you can do about it.
You gotta love state-run organizations.
Maybe it's just me, but I read some the positive feedback about this new program and it's sort of disturbing how grateful people are. In America, you have your choice of open source and commercial solutions to do exactly what this does, with no DRM or time limit. When the BBC decides to be so "gracious" as to allow its customers to "tape now, watch later.. but not too much later!," it's like a big love fest.
It's like when AT&T had a government-enforced monopoly on the whole phone network and they released another rotary telephone... in blue! Since you weren't allowed to plug in any unapproved device into "their" network, and you had to pay a monthly fee on each telephone you plugged in, you were stuck with only what they gave you.
Parent poster points out merely one problem with this system, I propose another one: Open up the BBC, allow competition with open standards.
Since when does needing to rethink a few scientific models, and go back and gather some data again now that we know we might have measured wrong constitue a crisis?
There's a place up ahead called Mescal Springs," he said. "As your attorney, I advise you to stop and take a swim." I shook my head. "It's absolutely imperative that we get to the Mint Hotel before the deadline for press registration," I said. "Otherwise, we might have to pay for our suite."
Barry was ready to escalate a much bigger war [cold war] than LBJ.
Barry was a staunch cold warrior, but that doesn't mean he would have escalated it any further than it already had been. His pragmatic nature virtually insures he wouldn't have had such an emotional and irrational view towards Vietnam (which caused the deaths of 50,000 Americans).
One thing, which comes right back to this (Valenti) article, is that Barry would've been very much against the DMCA (if he'd lived to see it). He was very much pro personal and economic freedoms (libertarian, with a lowercase L), and was even pro-abortion and indifferent to gays in the military.
If this country had turned out the way Barry wanted it to, there would be no patriot act, DMCA, or any of this other crap. LBJ and Valenti, on the other hand, represent the authoritarian and "security first" mindset that dominates modern political thinking. People don't realize the critical point that election really was. LBJ even said as much when he touted that he would "finish the work of the New Deal." He sure did. He massively increased the size of government, and proved that the American people could indeed be bought with their own money, as well as fake money, hot of the presses.
LBJ's mantra was "guns and butter"... Sounds just like Bush with his massive social and military spending, doesn't it?
We had "advisers" in there as early as Eisenhower. There was some escalation under Kennedy but not very much. LBJ escalated the conflict out of a seemingly insane attempt to 'save face' to show we weren't going to be intimidated by those [insert racial epithet]. More Americans died in Vietnam under LBJ than any other president. There's a documentary called "The Fog Of War" that shows a recorded conversation between Robert MacNamara and LBJ talking about the supposed torpedo fired at US boats around Vietnam which instigated our involvement (recent evidence shows this torpedo never existed). The conversation makes it clear that LBJ was basically a nut and a warmonger who wanted to "kick some ass" (actual quote).
As much as I'd like to blame Kennedy for Vietnam (so people would stop idolizing the guy), it really was LBJ's war.
Oddly enough, Jack Valenti's campaign against Goldwater painted Barry as the warmonger. Funny how that works out.
It's been ages since I've been to a movie because of him.
It's all anime for me now.
Now that really IS a travesty.
Personally, I disliked Jack way before any of YOU people did... well I hated him for stuff he did earlier, at any rate.
I'll always remember him as the SOB who helped the (even bigger SOB) LBJ win office by really shady tactics. In a documentary about Barry Goldwater (LBJ's opponent), Jack basically said "yeah, it was messed up, but it's OK cuz it worked!" Yeah, thanks for Vietnam, cock.
Of course, the MPAA rating system (which has a really Excellent documentary written about it) has pretty much borked the movie industry.
This kind of question pops up on Slashdot quite often. It's usually of the form "I should have had a lawyer when I started this, now what do I do?"
Yeah No kidding.
What is expected protocol between a client and a development house?
When they do this, sue the everloving @#&% out of them. If you paid to have it written, it's yours... of course, you should check your contract... if you have one.
This is of course the same brilliant strategy that the dems have been using for the last 12 years in elections -- fighting and winning the meaningless battles, and losing the important ones
While you're right, I'd also like to point out that even if they could impeach Cheney, they probably wouldn't, and if they did, they wouldn't go any further.
There is a reason there are two parties, and it's not just "how it worked out."
The Republicans/Democrats learned a long time ago that having a 50% chance of winning an election is a hell of a lot better than a 1/3, 1/4, 1/10, or 'Italy' chance of winning (Italy has like 30 political parties... it's a joke, get it?). It's fairly obvious that they do pull their punches when they can really hurt, and the party leaders do negotiate over the boundaries of their campaigns.
Collusion between the parties is a little mentioned but well known fact. They get together sometimes and say "If this gets out then we'll release this information." It's not illegal for them to do this (nor should it be, I guess).
Why? They NEED for the other party to be strong so 3rd parties don't come into the picture.
Think about it. The Republican and Democratic parties are composed of people with WILDLY different views, most of whom are NOT represented AT ALL. They still vote for their respective party as it's, according to them, more conducive to their political beliefs than the other. If 3rd parties come into the picture, chances are they're going to represent certain groups within the R&D parties far better than the official party line. They call these 3rd party candidates "spoilers," which I think says it all: 3rd parties, according to them only serve to undermine the major parties.
This is not really news to anyone. Just look how they rig the debates. Where were the 3rd party candidates in 2004? Banned from the debate. For two parties sooo diametrically opposed, they sure could agree over one thing: no newcomers. Badnarik (LBT) and Cobb (Green) even showed up at the debate and were arrested trying to get in. Not to mention the 'milk toast' moderators they always pick.
You don't support the criminalization of hands, penises, or the infinite multitude of objects that could serve as murder weapons, do you?
I thought only superman could murder someone with this penis.[1]
References 1. Malrats Brodie: It's impossible, Lois could never have Superman's baby. Do you think her fallopian tubes could handle the sperm? I guarantee you he blows a load like a shotgun right through her back. What about her womb? Do you think it's strong enough to carry her child?
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, the issue is much, much more complex, and no one wants to take into consideration the very real economic impacts of taking drastic action to reduce emissions, especially when China and India - forget the EU - are not saddled with the same restrictions.
Of course, even if the US and the EU signed Kyoto and did abide by its stipulations, the impact on global temperatures (provided you believe in anthropogenic global warming in the first place) would be undetectably small. Of course, the US didn't even sign it.
You also brought up an interesting point about China. China has more people than the US and the EU combined. If they get a per capita pollution production of even 50% the average American or European (which they may have already), it's going to make just about anything we can do pointless... short of detonating hundreds of EMPs over all the major cities to return us back to the stone-age.
And by the way, India has about the same amount of people as China, and is trying to develop just as fast.
Nobody is willing to take the necessary steps. To make matters worse, it seems that there has been a resurgence lately of "deniers" (a pop-term describing those who don't believe in anthropogenic global warming and simultaneously comparing them to holocaust deniers). The political forces are butting heads and getting nothing accomplished.
Good. The sooner, the better. I can't wait to see the consumer-whores freak out over not being able to dodge sales tax at the expense of their local communities! Bring back local businesses. Make Net businesses compete on the same level as their brick-and-mortar counterparts.
Thank you, my luddite friend.
Internet retailers are more efficient and usually pay their employees more than local businesses. They require fewer employees and serve more customers.
The thing is: The middleman shouldn't exist in the first place, if you think about it. The internet has middlemen competing and makes their role in the process less and less prevalent.
I used to work for one. I made 20% more than the average best buy employee starting, and I had nothing more than a high school diploma. I worked my way up to supervisor and could have even had health benefits if I had actually been full time. The place I worked for, in spite of all this, pays its employees less than most warehouses.
This new tax will help some local businesses. However, for the most part, the internet will continue to replace these businesses even on a 'level playing field'.
And on a slightly less related note: Is anyone else annoyed that the government pursues any possible source of revenue? People do not want to pay taxes, and the government makes more than enough money to do everything it should be doing. The solution to the budgetary crises across the US should be obvious: Cut spending. I guess it's a lot harder to shrink government than to steal more money from the people. Sales taxes are especially bad because they disproportionately tax the poor (poor pay a higher % of their income to a sales tax than others do).
100% certainty that 10 people sample-set is too little for a Yes-No experiement.
Not to mention that they were just using earbuds (not even high quality headphones).
This article was useless as per the headline of Music Listeners Test 128kbps vs. 256kbps AAC.
The majority of the stories are either "Bush/Cheney/The US/Halliburton is evil" or "OMG panic the environment is in trouble." I'm thinking the real purpose of this list is to say "here's stuff I think is really important but most people don't. Since I don't think it was featured enough, I'll going to just claim it was censored by news networks."
I totally agree. The last one of these 'censored stories of XXXX' I read was actually good though, so I read this one.
Total waste of my time. Speaking of wasted, sometimes I play a drinking game with lengthy news articles. Every time I read something that even I could discern as incorrect, I had a shot. I'm on my second bottle of scotch after reading this one.
Slashdot made me into an alcoholic.
Isn't that going to get laughed right out of the courtroom? I mean sure that level of pedanticism is tolerated in some forums, but this is a court of law. Surely the judge is going to say a dignified version of "What the fuck are you on? Get the fuck out of here."
/. article doesn't mention that dithering can actually cause headaches in some people (like myself).
The display can only show about a quarter million colors. This is not millions. Therefore, when Apple promised "millions", they were lying.
The reason dithering is bad is because many people (including myself) can see dithering quite easily and it looks, frankly, cheap and terrible.
By dithering the output on their displays, they have virtually assured graphics professionals cannot use their products for certain tasks without plugging in an external display. Again, they said they display 'millions' of colors, and therefore dithering shouldn't be present.
I was waiting for slashdot's take on this, obviously they've chosen to word the article in a very pro-Apple way. In other articles I've read, it points out that Apple makes no mention of dithering on their site, and suppresses the fact that their monitors are only 6bit, not 8bit. Also, the
Again, 8 bit monitors do exist, and it's a reasonable expectation that if the monitor is said to display 'millions' of colors, it must be 8bit. 6bit displays, such as Apples, cannot display millions of colors, and as such, they must be advertised as such.
I've heard from others that most retailers selling laptops with 6bit displays offer them as having 'millions of colors'. My preemptive response is that others doing it doesn't make it right.
My girlfriend recently bought a macbook. Luckily, she doesn't notice the dithering. However, as I said before, the thing gives me a headache after a while.
They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
Why not? Because losing 1 social 'war' is bad enough.
I do agree with the part of your post about punishing pirates, but I don't think it goes far enough. I think we should incarcerate them for 10 years in a windowless room, then suddenly let them walk out of prison, but as they walk out there's a trap door and they fall into a gigantic meat grinder which slowly grinds their flesh and bones into cat food over the course of a couple days. Then, take the 'Soylent Pirate' to market and resell it as animal feed to recoup the losses of the **AA!
Hell, it's less cruel and capricious than the DMCA!
Has anyone considered that allowing someone to 'role play' or 'express' their desires, no matter how taboo, in a virtual world, might lessen real-world activity? Any studies on this?
There's an interesting and amusing documentary called "I am a sex addict."
Not to spoil the ending, but the guy eventually goes to a sex addict support group for men, and they all agree that indulging in their fetishes only made the problem worse--made it easier to go one step further.
Regardless, I don't think child porn should be illegal. Molesting children and creating these images is already a crime (as it should be), these images are merely evidence that should be followed to its source.
The FBI already spends *MOST* of its resources tracking down child molesters (predominantly online). I'd say we've got the problem pretty well under control.
It's just silly and another anti-discrimination agenda that makes people across both party lines and ideologies "feel good" about themselves when really, they're just making the economy less efficient.
I think this law also "discriminates" against those of us with good genes by making us pay higher insurance premiums than we deserve. We can't change the genes we were born with! Why make us suffer?!
The problem is: Insurance companies should be able to discriminate based on anything you're comfortable with them knowing. If you have a genetic propensity for heart disease (like I do), you should pay more unless you take good care of your body (like I do). If my insurance company weren't so nervous about discriminating against fat people, my rates would be much lower, since the chances of a person with my lifestyle getting seriously ill are much lower.
Even if my insurance company could discriminate based on genetics, my flawed genes wouldn't raise my rates. This is because the actuarial tables would still weigh in my favor due to the life I have chosen to lead.
If it's not worth it for you to take care of yourself, fine; don't. I shouldn't have to pay for it because you don't, though.
Thank God it's now "evil" to smoke instead of a "lifestyle choice" (which obesity is slowly becoming; if it doesn't become a 'disease' first), otherwise they wouldn't offer discounts to non-smokers. Oddly enough, I didn't stop smoking until I started paying my own health insurance. Funny how that works out.
This reminds me of the ADA Episode of Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t!. Nothing government can do will make people equal to one another, and it's stupid to try. Moreover, most of your intrinsic flaws (which everyone has) can be overcome well enough to succeed.
As a side note, this article is an editorial, which is really unnecessary.
Though its "inefficient" (with only ~15% of PharmCo budgets going towards research), it's still got more money in it than the pharmaceutical research in the university system. Universities have the right to patent and license the drugs they create, by the way.
Big Pharma does not pay for the FDA. You and I do.
Wrong. The Pharm companies fund the testing of their own drugs. It's usually north of a billion per drug.
You call these companies "middlemen" because the universities find the exact chemical problem to solve and then the pharm companies take it from there. You forget, obviously, that the latter is much more impressive and expensive to do. Actually, it's many times more expensive.
The strange part is, if we'd opened the patents on AIDS drugs 10 years ago all over the world, these new ones wouldn't exist. Somehow you're trying to say that it's different now?
There was a great Frontline on this issue which you obviously need to see.
it s nice to see humanity win one for a change
who can really put a price on that?
*Raises hand* OOh! I can!
The number of years added to the lives of the Brazilians who get this drug at a reduced cost will be subtracted several times over from future AIDS victims who would have otherwise have had better drugs available due to the added research dollars.
In short, adding 10 days more life now = subtracting 20 days more life in the future (arbitrary but realistic figure). People who want to ban patents on drugs are either selfish or stupid, because they are basically killing future generations by choking off pharmaceutical research dollars.
Oh, and by the way, this is not the first time Brazil has done this with AIDS medications. I'm not sure why it's getting press now... Just thought I'd add that.
Honestly, the populations in Brazil who would most benefit from AIDS medication probably wouldn't have the scratch to pay the full price. However, this WILL lead to other countries doing the same thing. If enough of them do, people will stop investing in pharmaceutical research because there wont be any ROI.
What the drug companies should be able to do is sell these to Brazil at cost, as a form of price discrimination. However, if that were to happen, AIDS victims in the US and other countries who could otherwise afford to pay the real cost of these meds would simply fly to Brazil, pick up their prescriptions, and fly back (which would be cheaper).
By saying that these drugs are "counterfeit", the American drug companies can keep these cheap drugs from coming back to the United States at these low prices, which would be disastrous for drug companies, and indeed, future generations afflicted with AIDS. In truth, the drug companies may not care that Brazil does this, though they'll certainly try and keep 'rich' western countries from doing the same thing.
Whether the companies are good or evil is irrelevant, because they have no choice but to sell these drugs at the same price in every country. Just look at what the [relatively] rich Americans do: buy from Canada and Mexico. If we made this practice illegal (which I think is wrong, but bare with me here), only then could we see the true colors of American Pharma. They probably would be 'giving it away' in the 3rd world nations, if for PR if nothing else.
Somebody has to pay for the future of pharmacology, and the U.S. looks to be it.
The campaign didn't negotiate with him, and ended up promising him $10,000.
Correction: Apparently, the campaign didn't offer him any money, but said that they would negotiate in an apparent effort to stall for time while they were really negotiating with myspace to take the page.
Also, Joe's contact list (with over 160,000 names, now down to 140k) was not lost. It was transfered to a blank account. So it appears even myspace sympathized with Joe's position.
I list of 160,000 loyal obama supporters to ask for contributions from is probably worth the $50k Joe was asking.
That guy named a site after a well-known person and attempted to hold it ransom for much more than it was worth.
It was clearly marked as a "fan site.".. The price tag the guy set on it was to pay him back for the 160,000 user community he had formed which even myspace said he had a right to. He didn't want to stop doing the page--he would've kept doing the fan site for free. He asked for cash because, since they were forcing off his own project anyway, he thought he should be compensated for what he had lost.
The campaign didn't negotiate with him, and ended up promising him $10,000. This happened briefly before they strong-armed myspace to step in. It is not for you to say how much he can sell his OWN stuff for. Judging from the amount of work he put into it, and that he didn't want to give it up, it's obvious to me that he was not asking for too much.
The guy didn't have a right to Obama's name. He also didn't have a right to force himself into the campaign as he attempted.
He wasn't doing anything like that. He made the page and started it from the ground up and was an avid supporter of Obama, just trying to do his part. Over time, the community got huge under his care, and Obama's campaign stepped in and said "hey, nice work, gimme!".
Note that only the link - barack obama's name - got transferred, the idiot still has his page.
What? No. They transfered it to another URL and dropped his friends. All myspace did was transfer his text to another account. He lost EVERYTHING of value.
Losing a URL to a website, as any idiot can piece together, often ends an online community. This community was not created by the obama campaign. They could've setup an "official" page with a different URL and left this poor guy alone. Instead, they hijacked myspace's terms of service and fear of law suits to steal this guy's URL and destroy all his work.
The site was clearly labeled "unofficial," and the entire community knew it as such. The campaign simply wanted the address. Personally, I think it hurt them more than their new URL could ever help.
He deserves what he got. If you don't want your site to be transferred, don't name it after a public figure. If this had been a registrar issue the result would have been no different.
Registrar issues are vastly different than free myspace accounts. He wasn't even posing as Obama, so there's no legal issue here. Obama does not own the myspace.com/barackobama url any more than he owns en.wikipedia.com/Barack_Obama.
If I were Joe Anthony, I'd sue the Obama campaign if I could.
Wesley Willis' mother will be overjoyed!
NeoOffice is an independently developed version of OpenOffice.org 2.1 which runs on Mac OS X natively and without the need for X11. I've been using it for years.
And it's buggy as hell. I've been using it to write reports for end-of-term papers due recently. The only reason I was even able to stand it is its remarkable recovery features for when it crashes... and oh, does it ever crash. Version 2.0 wouldn't let me save or quit; I'd simply force-quit it and recover every document I ever wrote every time I restarted it. Version 2.1 fixes this issue, but freezes out keyboard and mouse input into the program whenever you do a find/replace.
On the other hand, I have a legal license of M$ office but for some reason it wont let me enter in my license code because of the trial version pre-installed on my Mac. No matter how many times I install it, it references the hidden preferences file (which I haven't had time to locate) and determines that it's the now-expired trial version. So I guess you can take your pick of the problems.
They just switched to Intel chips less than two years ago! There are still a few apps here and there that are still dependent on Rosetta. And Apple is supposed to just pick up a new microchip like a teenager picks up a new favorite song every other week? Intel's not the only one that would be pissed (and rightly so!), but we customers, as well. I don't want to deal with another switch, and neither does anyone else. Plus, I don't think Apple wants to throw its years of work away after only two very successful years.
The switch from PPC to intel was a far greater feat than going from Intel to AMD would be. In fact, I doubt there'd be a single software issue... apart from the lack of EFI (which I'm sure Apple could wrestle away from Intel at some outrageous price).
The problem is, AMD doesn't make anything Apple really wants. Apple needs good laptop processors, of which Intel make the best. Intel's doing better in the quad-core arena which is obviously where Apple wants to go.
This isn't just about buying AMD, it's also about switching processor suppliers--to processors which are currently not as good as Intel. They may be cheaper, but most macs require fast and cool processors due to their form-factor, or require the fastest available processors. AMD dominates in neither category.
I'm a huge AMD fan, my last PC (before I dumped it and my G5 to get a Mac Pro) was an AMD as were all my PCs before that. I fully admit, however, that currently Intel is winning the war.
We should tell the BBC this is unacceptable
Ultimately, there isn't anything you can do about it.
You gotta love state-run organizations.
Maybe it's just me, but I read some the positive feedback about this new program and it's sort of disturbing how grateful people are. In America, you have your choice of open source and commercial solutions to do exactly what this does, with no DRM or time limit. When the BBC decides to be so "gracious" as to allow its customers to "tape now, watch later.. but not too much later!," it's like a big love fest.
It's like when AT&T had a government-enforced monopoly on the whole phone network and they released another rotary telephone... in blue! Since you weren't allowed to plug in any unapproved device into "their" network, and you had to pay a monthly fee on each telephone you plugged in, you were stuck with only what they gave you.
Parent poster points out merely one problem with this system, I propose another one: Open up the BBC, allow competition with open standards.
Oh no! Scientists may have to earn their grants!
Reminds me of a passage out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
Barry was ready to escalate a much bigger war [cold war] than LBJ.
Barry was a staunch cold warrior, but that doesn't mean he would have escalated it any further than it already had been. His pragmatic nature virtually insures he wouldn't have had such an emotional and irrational view towards Vietnam (which caused the deaths of 50,000 Americans).
One thing, which comes right back to this (Valenti) article, is that Barry would've been very much against the DMCA (if he'd lived to see it). He was very much pro personal and economic freedoms (libertarian, with a lowercase L), and was even pro-abortion and indifferent to gays in the military.
If this country had turned out the way Barry wanted it to, there would be no patriot act, DMCA, or any of this other crap. LBJ and Valenti, on the other hand, represent the authoritarian and "security first" mindset that dominates modern political thinking. People don't realize the critical point that election really was. LBJ even said as much when he touted that he would "finish the work of the New Deal." He sure did. He massively increased the size of government, and proved that the American people could indeed be bought with their own money, as well as fake money, hot of the presses.
LBJ's mantra was "guns and butter"... Sounds just like Bush with his massive social and military spending, doesn't it?
Vietnam was Kennedy's doing, wasn't it?
We had "advisers" in there as early as Eisenhower. There was some escalation under Kennedy but not very much. LBJ escalated the conflict out of a seemingly insane attempt to 'save face' to show we weren't going to be intimidated by those [insert racial epithet]. More Americans died in Vietnam under LBJ than any other president. There's a documentary called "The Fog Of War" that shows a recorded conversation between Robert MacNamara and LBJ talking about the supposed torpedo fired at US boats around Vietnam which instigated our involvement (recent evidence shows this torpedo never existed). The conversation makes it clear that LBJ was basically a nut and a warmonger who wanted to "kick some ass" (actual quote).
As much as I'd like to blame Kennedy for Vietnam (so people would stop idolizing the guy), it really was LBJ's war.
Oddly enough, Jack Valenti's campaign against Goldwater painted Barry as the warmonger. Funny how that works out.
It's been ages since I've been to a movie because of him.
It's all anime for me now.
Now that really IS a travesty.
Personally, I disliked Jack way before any of YOU people did... well I hated him for stuff he did earlier, at any rate.
I'll always remember him as the SOB who helped the (even bigger SOB) LBJ win office by really shady tactics. In a documentary about Barry Goldwater (LBJ's opponent), Jack basically said "yeah, it was messed up, but it's OK cuz it worked!" Yeah, thanks for Vietnam, cock.
Of course, the MPAA rating system (which has a really Excellent documentary written about it) has pretty much borked the movie industry.
Yeah No kidding.
What is expected protocol between a client and a development house?
When they do this, sue the everloving @#&% out of them. If you paid to have it written, it's yours... of course, you should check your contract... if you have one.
This is of course the same brilliant strategy that the dems have been using for the last 12 years in elections -- fighting and winning the meaningless battles, and losing the important ones
While you're right, I'd also like to point out that even if they could impeach Cheney, they probably wouldn't, and if they did, they wouldn't go any further.
There is a reason there are two parties, and it's not just "how it worked out."
The Republicans/Democrats learned a long time ago that having a 50% chance of winning an election is a hell of a lot better than a 1/3, 1/4, 1/10, or 'Italy' chance of winning (Italy has like 30 political parties... it's a joke, get it?). It's fairly obvious that they do pull their punches when they can really hurt, and the party leaders do negotiate over the boundaries of their campaigns.
Collusion between the parties is a little mentioned but well known fact. They get together sometimes and say "If this gets out then we'll release this information." It's not illegal for them to do this (nor should it be, I guess).
Why? They NEED for the other party to be strong so 3rd parties don't come into the picture.
Think about it. The Republican and Democratic parties are composed of people with WILDLY different views, most of whom are NOT represented AT ALL. They still vote for their respective party as it's, according to them, more conducive to their political beliefs than the other. If 3rd parties come into the picture, chances are they're going to represent certain groups within the R&D parties far better than the official party line. They call these 3rd party candidates "spoilers," which I think says it all: 3rd parties, according to them only serve to undermine the major parties.
This is not really news to anyone. Just look how they rig the debates. Where were the 3rd party candidates in 2004? Banned from the debate. For two parties sooo diametrically opposed, they sure could agree over one thing: no newcomers. Badnarik (LBT) and Cobb (Green) even showed up at the debate and were arrested trying to get in. Not to mention the 'milk toast' moderators they always pick.
Seems doable, we don't need Belgium
No kidding, their chief export seems to be evil super villains anyway.
You don't support the criminalization of hands, penises, or the infinite multitude of objects that could serve as murder weapons, do you?
I thought only superman could murder someone with this penis.[1]
References
1. Malrats
Brodie: It's impossible, Lois could never have Superman's baby. Do you think her fallopian tubes could handle the sperm? I guarantee you he blows a load like a shotgun right through her back. What about her womb? Do you think it's strong enough to carry her child?
"Google, Intel, Microsoft merge into Cyberdyne"
If they merged, the apocalypse would happen long before they created any robots.