The argument that Habeas Corpus needs to apply to literally everyone because otherwise there is no way to "prove" that you are a US citizen to which MCA doesn't apply is something of a curious one. MCA already does not apply to US citizens apprehended on US soil. You do not need a court to affirm what is already known. If you believe the authorities will ignore the fact that someone is a US citizen and detain them anyway, then there are larger fundamental issues than whether or not someone can challenge detention; indeed, if the government really wanted to secretly detain someone without cause or ability to challenge, US citizen or not, they simply wouldn't give them any recourse at all, Habeas Corpus or no, now would they?
I'm not a US citizen. I will not visit the US because Habeas Corpus does not apply to me. I'd consider visiting a country where I can be held indefinitely without trial to be something of an issue. I'd consider a country that would hold a visitor indefinitely without charge to be a regime that does not hold justice in much regard. YMMV.
I am a developer. I'll admit it: my bread-and-butter today is (and has been for the last year or so).NET. I love Perl and Ruby and PHP, and I can use them as good on OS X as on any other OS (and significantly easier than on Windows). But I also really like Cocoa and Objective-C, and I believe it's a good example of what.NET could have become had they actively tried to keep the class count down. You can't really claim "marketing" or "RDF" on developer APIs - you start to notice as soon as you use it, and while Cocoa might seem eclectic at the start, it works really well.
Random supporting point, I write code for windows (IIS/SQL Server/VS.Net etc) on a Mac. Under parallels, the single issue I've found is that SQL Server profiler doesn't always restart when I pause it and I think that relates to how the IP address is assigned.
Incidentally my biggest beef is the hardware (aluminium is not that tough, no dedicated pge up/down, home, end keys), not the software. I'd suggest a Mac for pretty much anyone else in a heartbeat.
I have this theory. The skill of the driver behind the wheel of a car is inversely proportional to the cost of the car. Divide by 3 if they are driving a SUV.
Best programming practice is to do everything server side...
Rubbish. Doing everything server side means you have slow, unresponsive apps. I'll pick one real world example.
One application I work on allows people to upload documents, lots of documents. It isn't unusual to have people uploading 5Mb of documents in a single POST. The names of these documents need to be checked to ensure that that don't conflict with existing document names. With a small amount of AJAX, I can check the name and warn people of the conflict. If I stuck with keeping everything server side, I'd have to wait until the POST had been completed before warning them.
Strictly speaking, this isn't a story for Down Under, it is a story from New Zealand (New Zuland if you prefer).
While many "down under" residents view New Zealand as a minor state of Australia (a dimuitive Tasmania with more sheep), New Zealanders tend to take issue with this.
1. You can only access the the data through the API you provide. You need to do the work of writing reporting, updating etc. 2. You have to write the API for other code to access
The point is you remove all generalised means of accessing the data. Also you end up writing a lot of code rather than relying on a thrid party provider to write common code.
I've just realised I said something quite stupid, I should remember to try not to think out loud. I said I agree with Gould and one sentence earlier said that the domains cross over, while Gould's whole point is that the domains don't overlap at all. (NOMA - Non-Overlapping Magisteria). I shouldn't have opened my mouth, I'm going to have to think quite a bit more before I say anything else.
Not sure I understand the aside, "(which is accepted by historians)". Certainly historians don't see general support for the story about Jesus walking on water, or rising from the dead. Those are claims, which can be considered scientific claims since they are testable and falsify-able. If there were evidence, it could be examined for veracity. Other explanations (solid surface just below the water, theft of the body) could be posited and evidence for those alternate explanations examined.
Sorry that was a rather quick aside. My understanding is that there is substantive agreement between credible historians on a large part of the bible. More importantly, as far as I am aware there are no significant disagreements. Mind you that might depend on how you read Genesis. What you make of that can be subject to some discussion. The examples of walking on water/resurrection are interesting because to some extent they depend on your starting assumptions. If you assume the there is no God or no being capable of interving in the world, then another explanation for these events must be found.
The resurrection is an interesting one. If you accept the gospel accounts (and I know that is a big if), there aren't all that many options. Who could steal the body? The first problem is that there were Roman soldiers guarding the body. They had no interest in stealing it, they had just executed the guy. The temple authorities had no interest in stealing th body, they had just engineered his execution, they want it made clear that he is dead. The disciples had scattered in disarray. So who did steal the body?
But these "effects" of the Christian god, which you say the bible documents, belies the idea of "separate magisteria" postulated by Gould.
That is a really good point and one I will have to think about further. I could argue that you can apply the scientific method without that being science but that feels a rather hollow argument. My initial thought is that there can still be crossover in separate domains ("magisteria"). History crosses into science crosses into literature... That doesn't mean that they aren't separate domains.
I'd certainly agree with Gould's point though. That is something that cuts both ways: I wish US Christians would stop treating the bible like a scientific text WRT Genesis.
As an aside, I have been trying to read the bible (KJV), but I don't suffer fools gladly...
Good to hear. Are you reading from cover to cover or starting in particular books? Any particular reason why KJV? It is a reasonable translation but the language isn't quite the languge of today. It is quite majestic though. A relatively good colloqial translation is The Message.
Historians accept that the Bible exists, yes. Not sure what your point was, there, but I'm fairly sure that you don't know either, given that even biblical scholars can't agree on what real events some of the Bible might map to, and how literally or figuratively to interpret it.
But they can agree on what a large number of real events map. Does that mean because you can't amp all events, you throw everything out? Certainly credible (eliminating people like Spong) biblical scholars don't agree on how to interpret all parts of the bible, but there substantial agreement. Can you tell me of a field of stufy where all practioners are in lockstep?
At a minimum, you would begin such an effort with a simple question: if all of this were fairy tale invented by people, would it still exist in the same form? The obvious answer is that, yes, it would exist in the same form, just like thousands of other works of fiction.
Really? It is historically well attested fiction. How many popular (world bestseller even) works of fiction center on a real historical figure? How many people are willing to die for works of fiction? I know of no work of fiction that makes the kind of claims that the bible makes. I know of no work of fiction that has had the impact that the bible has had.
PS: your essay about Perl is also highly problematic. Try working in languages like Smalltalk and Ruby for a bit. I think you'll have very different opinions of what a usable object system must provide when you're done. Specifically, your attitude toward dynamic object capablities are somewhat archaic in the face of modern language design.
Thanks for the feedback. I haven't used either Ruby or smalltalk, so that would no doubt colour my thinking.
Christians would argue that he does show effects that can be studied. Sending his son to earth would be a pretty good example of that.
I have a suggestion. Take a look at the bible (which is accepted by historians) and perform your own scientific study of the effects and nature of God.
... and the last decent product MS made was called DOS 5.0
While this might be a popular sentiment on slashdot, it is utter crap. I'm no MS fanboy, I'm typing this on a mac laptop and I run linux servers at work (and at home).
You are telling me that the windows 2000 family of products (2K, 2K3, XP) are not "decent"? And Office (particularly the Exchange/Outlook combination)? And SQL Server 7+? And Visual Studio?
Strangely there don't seem to be anthing on the market that can compete with Exchange+Outlook for groupware. There also is nothing to compare to MS Office on features (Open Office is ok, but let's face it, it isn't as good as Office). And SQL Server is a solid if not particularly spectacular product. With Visual studio, one might debate the relative benfits of features like intellisense (and 2k5 seems to have dropped the ball in a few ways) however Microsoft has consistently produced one of the fastest, most standards compliant C++ compilers out there (yes they have gone a bit off the rails with wanting.Net support).
Remember your criteria was "decent", not amazing. FUD is always detestable.
Slashdot Mirror
If the entertainment companies made something worth looking at people might pay money for it.
I mean that both in the sense that the DRM lowers the worth of the product and that the product itself is crap.
FWIW I don't pirate any music, video or software.
rsync. Hard drives are cheap, put cheap boxs onsite and offsite and run a cron job to rsync the data. Make sure you get emailed the results.
The argument that Habeas Corpus needs to apply to literally everyone because otherwise there is no way to "prove" that you are a US citizen to which MCA doesn't apply is something of a curious one. MCA already does not apply to US citizens apprehended on US soil. You do not need a court to affirm what is already known. If you believe the authorities will ignore the fact that someone is a US citizen and detain them anyway, then there are larger fundamental issues than whether or not someone can challenge detention; indeed, if the government really wanted to secretly detain someone without cause or ability to challenge, US citizen or not, they simply wouldn't give them any recourse at all, Habeas Corpus or no, now would they?
I'm not a US citizen. I will not visit the US because Habeas Corpus does not apply to me. I'd consider visiting a country where I can be held indefinitely without trial to be something of an issue. I'd consider a country that would hold a visitor indefinitely without charge to be a regime that does not hold justice in much regard. YMMV.
Random supporting point, I write code for windows (IIS/SQL Server/VS.Net etc) on a Mac. Under parallels, the single issue I've found is that SQL Server profiler doesn't always restart when I pause it and I think that relates to how the IP address is assigned.
Incidentally my biggest beef is the hardware (aluminium is not that tough, no dedicated pge up/down, home, end keys), not the software. I'd suggest a Mac for pretty much anyone else in a heartbeat.
I have this theory. The skill of the driver behind the wheel of a car is inversely proportional to the cost of the car. Divide by 3 if they are driving a SUV.
Is that a typo? Why set up a laptop as a print server?
Don't you mean tube?
Well that is a pity. I guess a strong belief international law is enough to make you an anti-semite.
Rubbish. Doing everything server side means you have slow, unresponsive apps. I'll pick one real world example.
One application I work on allows people to upload documents, lots of documents. It isn't unusual to have people uploading 5Mb of documents in a single POST. The names of these documents need to be checked to ensure that that don't conflict with existing document names. With a small amount of AJAX, I can check the name and warn people of the conflict. If I stuck with keeping everything server side, I'd have to wait until the POST had been completed before warning them.
Lol. Nice. Seen this?
Correnting myself, apparently down under refers to New Zealand too.
Strictly speaking, this isn't a story for Down Under, it is a story from New Zealand (New Zuland if you prefer).
While many "down under" residents view New Zealand as a minor state of Australia (a dimuitive Tasmania with more sheep), New Zealanders tend to take issue with this.
I think that is rather unlikely.
1. You can only access the the data through the API you provide. You need to do the work of writing reporting, updating etc.
2. You have to write the API for other code to access
The point is you remove all generalised means of accessing the data. Also you end up writing a lot of code rather than relying on a thrid party provider to write common code.
Can I join? I want to be protected from the children too.
The movie Das Boot starts with the statistic that of the 40,000 German sailors who served on U-Boats in WWII, 30,000 of them died.
I've just realised I said something quite stupid, I should remember to try not to think out loud. I said I agree with Gould and one sentence earlier said that the domains cross over, while Gould's whole point is that the domains don't overlap at all. (NOMA - Non-Overlapping Magisteria). I shouldn't have opened my mouth, I'm going to have to think quite a bit more before I say anything else.
Not sure I understand the aside, "(which is accepted by historians)". Certainly historians don't see general support for the story about Jesus walking on water, or rising from the dead. Those are claims, which can be considered scientific claims since they are testable and falsify-able. If there were evidence, it could be examined for veracity. Other explanations (solid surface just below the water, theft of the body) could be posited and evidence for those alternate explanations examined.
Sorry that was a rather quick aside. My understanding is that there is substantive agreement between credible historians on a large part of the bible. More importantly, as far as I am aware there are no significant disagreements. Mind you that might depend on how you read Genesis. What you make of that can be subject to some discussion. The examples of walking on water/resurrection are interesting because to some extent they depend on your starting assumptions. If you assume the there is no God or no being capable of interving in the world, then another explanation for these events must be found.
The resurrection is an interesting one. If you accept the gospel accounts (and I know that is a big if), there aren't all that many options. Who could steal the body? The first problem is that there were Roman soldiers guarding the body. They had no interest in stealing it, they had just executed the guy. The temple authorities had no interest in stealing th body, they had just engineered his execution, they want it made clear that he is dead. The disciples had scattered in disarray. So who did steal the body?
But these "effects" of the Christian god, which you say the bible documents, belies the idea of "separate magisteria" postulated by Gould.
That is a really good point and one I will have to think about further. I could argue that you can apply the scientific method without that being science but that feels a rather hollow argument. My initial thought is that there can still be crossover in separate domains ("magisteria"). History crosses into science crosses into literature... That doesn't mean that they aren't separate domains.
I'd certainly agree with Gould's point though. That is something that cuts both ways: I wish US Christians would stop treating the bible like a scientific text WRT Genesis.
As an aside, I have been trying to read the bible (KJV), but I don't suffer fools gladly...
Good to hear. Are you reading from cover to cover or starting in particular books? Any particular reason why KJV? It is a reasonable translation but the language isn't quite the languge of today. It is quite majestic though. A relatively good colloqial translation is The Message.
Sorry that was rather sweeping. I could add in the word largely if you prefer.
Historians accept that the Bible exists, yes. Not sure what your point was, there, but I'm fairly sure that you don't know either, given that even biblical scholars can't agree on what real events some of the Bible might map to, and how literally or figuratively to interpret it.
But they can agree on what a large number of real events map. Does that mean because you can't amp all events, you throw everything out? Certainly credible (eliminating people like Spong) biblical scholars don't agree on how to interpret all parts of the bible, but there substantial agreement. Can you tell me of a field of stufy where all practioners are in lockstep?
At a minimum, you would begin such an effort with a simple question: if all of this were fairy tale invented by people, would it still exist in the same form? The obvious answer is that, yes, it would exist in the same form, just like thousands of other works of fiction.
Really? It is historically well attested fiction. How many popular (world bestseller even) works of fiction center on a real historical figure? How many people are willing to die for works of fiction? I know of no work of fiction that makes the kind of claims that the bible makes. I know of no work of fiction that has had the impact that the bible has had.
PS: your essay about Perl is also highly problematic. Try working in languages like Smalltalk and Ruby for a bit. I think you'll have very different opinions of what a usable object system must provide when you're done. Specifically, your attitude toward dynamic object capablities are somewhat archaic in the face of modern language design.
Thanks for the feedback. I haven't used either Ruby or smalltalk, so that would no doubt colour my thinking.
My father had a collegue who wrote a book that was under 100 pages that sold for ~$500 AUD (something like $400 of your USD). Some sort of legal text.
...he would show effects and could be studied.
Christians would argue that he does show effects that can be studied. Sending his son to earth would be a pretty good example of that.
I have a suggestion. Take a look at the bible (which is accepted by historians) and perform your own scientific study of the effects and nature of God.
... and the last decent product MS made was called DOS 5.0
.Net support).
While this might be a popular sentiment on slashdot, it is utter crap. I'm no MS fanboy, I'm typing this on a mac laptop and I run linux servers at work (and at home).
You are telling me that the windows 2000 family of products (2K, 2K3, XP) are not "decent"? And Office (particularly the Exchange/Outlook combination)? And SQL Server 7+? And Visual Studio?
Strangely there don't seem to be anthing on the market that can compete with Exchange+Outlook for groupware. There also is nothing to compare to MS Office on features (Open Office is ok, but let's face it, it isn't as good as Office). And SQL Server is a solid if not particularly spectacular product. With Visual studio, one might debate the relative benfits of features like intellisense (and 2k5 seems to have dropped the ball in a few ways) however Microsoft has consistently produced one of the fastest, most standards compliant C++ compilers out there (yes they have gone a bit off the rails with wanting
Remember your criteria was "decent", not amazing. FUD is always detestable.
It's possible that gun ownership isn't essential to freedom. That's a worthwhile discussion.
That is the discussion I am opening up.
But if you're willing to accept that something is essential to freedom and then trade it away, I don't want you in my country.
I'm not in your country (thank God).
The right to violent self-defense is essential to freedom...
It is also essential to get those high homicide rates. Your call.
How about engagement with the population?