In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the nation's senior military officer have spoken of "a global struggle against violent extremism" rather than "the global war on terror," which had been the catchphrase of choice.
That's all reasonable and I have no problem with what you're saying. I just found the original posts hyperbole a bit silly. I think it's enough to call slavery the horrible crime it was.
I'm not sure where the need to proclaim American slavery the worst atrocity in all history comes from. Maybe it's some kind of "my outrage is bigger than your outrage" pose meant to show the poster is morally superior to the rest of us. I don't know, and it's futile to speculate.
I don't disagree with that. The interesting part is just that I have a real hard time imagining how slaves could be treated worse than, say chickens or rats. What would that even entail??
Slavery wasn't done to exterminate people, the idea was to keep them alive and usefully working, so it's a lot better than the Holocaust right from the start.
Oh, I get your logic after thinking a while. The slaves were treated worse than the best treated animal on the farm. That's probably true.
I was looking for evidence that they were treated worse than any animal on the farm, like the chickens or the rats.
My impression, without having studied this much, is that the slaves were at worst seen as just an other useful farm animal, and was treated as such. A farmer takes care to have his plowing horse in good health and performing well, since it's a pretty valuable investment to him. From what I've heard, slaves were at worst treated in the same way, since they were also quite pricey and important investments for the farm.
I have a hard time classifyfing a trade pattern over several centuries as a single event like that. Why not proclaim "murder" or "war" the worst atrocity ever, by summing up everyone who's fallen victim to them over all human history?
And I'd be really interested to hear about some treatment of slaves that was actually beneath how farm animals were treated. I have a hard time imagining what that could possibly be.
I have no insight into the FISA process, since it's Very Secret. But those numbers don't need to mean anything more than that it's very clear to both sides what rules FISA operates under, and what requests are worth submitting.
Many an FBI agent may want to wiretap his wife, but he wouldn't bother to submit a request for that to FISA, since it is sure to be rejected. If FISA is abolished, and they can wiretap anyone at will, that would change things a lot.
I would prefer a sexual definition of porn. That is, porn involving pre-pubescent people would be child porn, while porn involving sexually mature persons is not. If you can reproduce, you are not a child in a biological sense.
That would tie in with what pedophelia actually is. It's not the desire to have sex with people under 18. Lusting for a 17 year old does not in any way make you a pedophile, and it's bizarre and sad that some people actually believe that.
That's not to say that porn involving under 18's could not be illegal, or that there couldn't be a separate age of consent, but it should be done as it's own thing, not by pretending that either of these things are pedophilia.
You seem to be saying that only those who have actually had their rights violated by the government have a right to complain about those violations?
Do you see it as a problem that under this logic, the government could openly operate death squads and kill anyone they wanted in broad daylight, and nobody would ever have a reason to complain?
Why is this even news? Military propoganda is as old as military history.
You have very high standards for news. Look at todays headlines. Can you find anything that hasn't happened before? Crimes, wars, elections, earthquakes, all of these things have happened many times before, and should by your standards not be reported.
I never met a single person over here who even heard of "intelligent design"
How do you know? Do you really ask every single person you meet if they have heard of it?
Given that these views are socially unacceptable in your circles, I would expect anyone believeing them to at a minimum not bring up the subject by themselves. And most people would rather be quiet or even pretend to agree on controversial subjects, rather than be exposed as a believer in "nonsense".
It's not unlike some people who claim to never have met a gay person.
As a Swede, I can tell you that all this shows is that Swedish politicians lie just as much as the ones where you're reading this. Sorry, despite what you may have heard, we're not a utopian paradise. They don't really exist.
One habit they have is to announce grand plans that will be accomplished in some far off date. That way when you complain about how things are today, they can say "yeah, that's a problem, but we have a goal of fixing this by the year 20xx". It's also a way of building coalitions, "if you [crazy fringe party] support our goverment program today, well fulfil your grand insane plan in a decade or two, when conditions are right". When that year arrives, they declare that the goal wasn't met, blame something or someone, and announce a new goal.
Also, reading the original article announcing this goal, reveals what it actually is. Let me translate the final paragraph:
The goal is that the dependency on fossil fuel should be broken by 2020. By then no house should need oil for heating. By then no driver should have to use only gasoline. By then there should always be better alternatives than oil.
So they're not at all saying that Sweden should use no oil by then, only that there should be alternative ("better") fuels available for those who wish to use them.
If someone were to use AI to predict the stock market, and would invest on it based on those predictions, they would be very successful initially, but would also change the behaviour of the same market up until it would render the model unusable.
It gets real useful when you then build a space station out of all that "trash". It's not perfect, but given that it costs $10k/kg to send up cusom made stuff, you should be able to do a lot, given the right tools.
Your habit of turning the tv on (and off) only once a day is probably a result of using the power button. I use the remote, and probably do it 3-5 times a day. It's quite possible that I use less total energy as a result, than if I had had the incentive to just leave it on all night.
"Thirty years ago the Europeans used to say that Americans got a very good high school education. Of course they had to go to four years of college to get it.
That was true then; it is not true now. Even four years of college doesn't always (perhaps not even frequently; I don't have hard data, but see the survey yesterday) produce as good an education as did Memphis Central High School or Memphis Technical High School in 1950."
The difference is that you can sue a drug company if they sell you dangerous or inefficient drugs. This and brand power should be enough to keep them very honest, though some accidents will - and should - always happen.
Drugs have costs and benefits, with the costs being side effects and the benefits their healing power. I'm so sick of discussion of them pretending there are only costs.
Since, as you point out, Apple's numbers are probably misleading, there is all the more reason to measure it objectively. And the article endevours to perform just this useful service.
Why would there need to be stun involved to motivate this??
Slashdot Mirror
In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the nation's senior military officer have spoken of "a global struggle against violent extremism" rather than "the global war on terror," which had been the catchphrase of choice.
From this article
That's all reasonable and I have no problem with what you're saying. I just found the original posts hyperbole a bit silly. I think it's enough to call slavery the horrible crime it was.
I'm not sure where the need to proclaim American slavery the worst atrocity in all history comes from. Maybe it's some kind of "my outrage is bigger than your outrage" pose meant to show the poster is morally superior to the rest of us. I don't know, and it's futile to speculate.
I don't disagree with that. The interesting part is just that I have a real hard time imagining how slaves could be treated worse than, say chickens or rats. What would that even entail??
Slavery wasn't done to exterminate people, the idea was to keep them alive and usefully working, so it's a lot better than the Holocaust right from the start.
Oh, I get your logic after thinking a while. The slaves were treated worse than the best treated animal on the farm. That's probably true.
I was looking for evidence that they were treated worse than any animal on the farm, like the chickens or the rats.
My impression, without having studied this much, is that the slaves were at worst seen as just an other useful farm animal, and was treated as such. A farmer takes care to have his plowing horse in good health and performing well, since it's a pretty valuable investment to him. From what I've heard, slaves were at worst treated in the same way, since they were also quite pricey and important investments for the farm.
I have a hard time classifyfing a trade pattern over several centuries as a single event like that. Why not proclaim "murder" or "war" the worst atrocity ever, by summing up everyone who's fallen victim to them over all human history?
And I'd be really interested to hear about some treatment of slaves that was actually beneath how farm animals were treated. I have a hard time imagining what that could possibly be.
I have no insight into the FISA process, since it's Very Secret. But those numbers don't need to mean anything more than that it's very clear to both sides what rules FISA operates under, and what requests are worth submitting.
Many an FBI agent may want to wiretap his wife, but he wouldn't bother to submit a request for that to FISA, since it is sure to be rejected. If FISA is abolished, and they can wiretap anyone at will, that would change things a lot.
If Tivo is actually that likely to win the trial, the stock market will already have factored this into the price.
You can't beat the market that easily...
That's a coherent argument I don't have much problem with. I just wish they would stop calling it "child pornography".
I would prefer a sexual definition of porn. That is, porn involving pre-pubescent people would be child porn, while porn involving sexually mature persons is not. If you can reproduce, you are not a child in a biological sense.
That would tie in with what pedophelia actually is. It's not the desire to have sex with people under 18. Lusting for a 17 year old does not in any way make you a pedophile, and it's bizarre and sad that some people actually believe that.
That's not to say that porn involving under 18's could not be illegal, or that there couldn't be a separate age of consent, but it should be done as it's own thing, not by pretending that either of these things are pedophilia.
You seem to be saying that only those who have actually had their rights violated by the government have a right to complain about those violations?
Do you see it as a problem that under this logic, the government could openly operate death squads and kill anyone they wanted in broad daylight, and nobody would ever have a reason to complain?
Why is this even news? Military propoganda is as old as military history.
You have very high standards for news. Look at todays headlines. Can you find anything that hasn't happened before? Crimes, wars, elections, earthquakes, all of these things have happened many times before, and should by your standards not be reported.
I never met a single person over here who even heard of "intelligent design"
How do you know? Do you really ask every single person you meet if they have heard of it?
Given that these views are socially unacceptable in your circles, I would expect anyone believeing them to at a minimum not bring up the subject by themselves. And most people would rather be quiet or even pretend to agree on controversial subjects, rather than be exposed as a believer in "nonsense".
It's not unlike some people who claim to never have met a gay person.
... the hard part is finding a non petroleum powered flight to get there...
Will they be seen as the just and right protectors of Democracy, or will he be seen as the worst president of all time?
I'm gonna go out on a limb and predict it will be somewhere in between. And that different people will have different opinions.
"Best flood protection system"??? Never heard of any such beast...
You're probably referring to Holland, another foreign country located outside the US.
As a Swede, I can tell you that all this shows is that Swedish politicians lie just as much as the ones where you're reading this. Sorry, despite what you may have heard, we're not a utopian paradise. They don't really exist.
One habit they have is to announce grand plans that will be accomplished in some far off date. That way when you complain about how things are today, they can say "yeah, that's a problem, but we have a goal of fixing this by the year 20xx". It's also a way of building coalitions, "if you [crazy fringe party] support our goverment program today, well fulfil your grand insane plan in a decade or two, when conditions are right". When that year arrives, they declare that the goal wasn't met, blame something or someone, and announce a new goal.
Also, reading the original article announcing this goal, reveals what it actually is. Let me translate the final paragraph:
The goal is that the dependency on fossil fuel should be broken by 2020. By then no house should need oil for heating. By then no driver should have to use only gasoline. By then there should always be better alternatives than oil.
So they're not at all saying that Sweden should use no oil by then, only that there should be alternative ("better") fuels available for those who wish to use them.
But the MPAA's opinion is that there is no such thing as "Fair Use".
Maybe, but what matters from a legal perspective is what laws are actually in effect, not what kind of laws someone thinks should be.
At worst, someone violating laws they think should exist makes them hypocrites, not criminals.
If someone were to use AI to predict the stock market, and would invest on it based on those predictions, they would be very successful initially, but would also change the behaviour of the same market up until it would render the model unusable.
I suspect this has happened several times.
It gets real useful when you then build a space station out of all that "trash". It's not perfect, but given that it costs $10k/kg to send up cusom made stuff, you should be able to do a lot, given the right tools.
Your habit of turning the tv on (and off) only once a day is probably a result of using the power button. I use the remote, and probably do it 3-5 times a day. It's quite possible that I use less total energy as a result, than if I had had the incentive to just leave it on all night.
"Thirty years ago the Europeans used to say that Americans got a very good high school education. Of course they had to go to four years of college to get it.
That was true then; it is not true now. Even four years of college doesn't always (perhaps not even frequently; I don't have hard data, but see the survey yesterday) produce as good an education as did Memphis Central High School or Memphis Technical High School in 1950."
From jerrypournelle.com
The difference is that you can sue a drug company if they sell you dangerous or inefficient drugs. This and brand power should be enough to keep them very honest, though some accidents will - and should - always happen.
Drugs have costs and benefits, with the costs being side effects and the benefits their healing power. I'm so sick of discussion of them pretending there are only costs.
http://reason.com/9505/SASHA.may.html
(there was an extra slash)
Aren't comet's supposed to consist mostly of frozen water and gasses? Wouldn't most of that melt when exposed to earth temperatures?
I know they handle the sample in a very clean room, but shouldn't it also be very cold?
I've looked for mention of this in any of the articles, but haven't seen anything. So I'm probably misunderstanding something.
Since, as you point out, Apple's numbers are probably misleading, there is all the more reason to measure it objectively. And the article endevours to perform just this useful service.
Why would there need to be stun involved to motivate this??