There's really no such thing as "no judicial review". All someone has to do is get a court to rule that the no judicial review law violates the separation of powers and then issue an injunction.
Part of the bill forbids states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens, and other parts of the bill are designed to make obtaining a license illegally more difficult. If these safeguards had been in place several years ago, Mohammed Atta would have been arrested and deported for his expired visa violation when he presented his license to the feds at the airport.
The problem with the quote in the parent post is that Rep. Davis spoke poorly, though I suppose it could make sense if you assume that "who they say they are" includes being a legal resident of the US.
Let's take a survey. Reply to this post with the state you live in and whether or not your state's driver's licenses already have, or will have in the near future due to changes in state law, the following features mandated by this bill:
(1) The person's full legal name. (2) The person's date of birth. (3) The person's gender. (4) The person's driver's license or identification card number. (5) A digital photograph of the person. (6) The person's address of principle residence. (7) The person's signature. (8) Physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes. (9) A common machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements.
For the purposes of #9, I'm going to assume that a magnetic stripe is acceptable.
Did it ever occur to you that two intelligent enlightened people can have an honest disagreement over politics?
That's what boggles my mind as well. If I present my nominally conservative opinions to a liberal audience of the Slashdot sort, no actual debate occurs because I am automagically wrong. (And yes, the Pat Robertson crowd does the same thing.) I'm actually willing to listen to people with differing viewpoints, but I got tired of hearing "because I said so" as support for one's opinion when I was about eight.
By the way, I always figured that if there were ever a "Fuck" moderation category, it'd give +1.
As a researcher in artificial evolution and genetic algorithms, I have a very good understanding of natural selection. Of course, I should have expected nothing less than an ad hominem attack on Slashdot.
It means that if you possess some genetic advantage, you will have a better chance to survive and procreate, and therefore pass your advantage to the next generation. Same thing applies to genetic disadvantages.
Exactly. If a genetic disadvantage is made to have a lesser detrimental effect on reproductive fitness, then that disadvantageous trait will appear more often in the future.
Most diseases that stem cell research holds a promise to cure are either unrelated to genetic defects (paralysis) or don't usually show up until the carrier is in his/her 50s. By that time, chances are they've already had children if they wanted them.
This is a dodge around my earlier example, as I mentioned specifically the use of embryonic stem cells to treat genetic abnormalities. Implied (though I suppose I should have been explicit) was the treatment of diseases which are apparent before or at reproductive age.
Perhaps I also should have provided the better example of cloning (with gene therapy) for organ harvest, rather than stem cell harvest, since congenital organ defects quite often do severely affect the health of younger people. The viewpoint I am mentioning here would indicate that this is unethical as well, regardless of whether the embryo is altered to make the resulting clone anencephalic.
Care to expound upon that? I have a feeling that I can make reasonable refutations to any argument you might present while still remaining well within the bounds of biology.
Then why are high-level eBayed characters so easily detected by other players? No, wait, I'll answer that for you - it's because the purchaser of the eBayed character lacks the skills to back up the gear and experience possessed by the character. These skills are obtained naturally by spending time learning the game through levelling up one's own character.
On the other hand, my old C-64 would periodically get filled with dust to the point where it would overheat after about a half hour of operation. The two workarounds we figured out were to point a box fan at it or to open it up and vacuum out all the dust.
It's not nearly as cut-and-dried as you believe. For example, a person could make the claim that by using embryonic stem cells to heal diseases caused by genetic defects, we are preventing natural selection from weeding out those genetic defects, causing more people to suffer from those diseases in the (very) long run.
Also, some people believe that human embryos are human lives (and they don't have to be Religious to feel that way), and feel that sacrificing some lives for the prolonging of other lives is unethical.
Then again, there's always that smashing success known as The Sims Online, boasting a decline in subscriber totals down to roughly 36k, from a peak of 105k in mid-2003.
Grandstanding, perhaps. But astroturfing? This guy's no Roland Piquepaille - you could download the PDF of the story without viewing a single advertisement.
Let's think about it. What makes these goods more "virtual" (ie not-real) than MP3 music or videos? No, really?
That'd be the Terms of Usage for the game, which states that the items are not the property of the player and cannot be sold for real-life compensation.
The concept of a third-world "sweatshop" producing these goods is ridiculous. Why would someone spend a large amount of money buying expensive gear and paying for difficult to obtain broadband connections in the 3rd world, where they'd be experiencing substantial delay lags with the servers running online games in the U.S.? He can get the same goods from idle american teenagers looking for a little extra cash who already have all the latest gear, without spending any money himself.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think you're missing the point here. What's going on is that people in foreign countries (e.g., China) are employing locals to play the game and farm in-game gold and/or items. They then sell the gold and/or items on third-party auction sites to wealthy American or European players for RL cash. If one of the employees meets a quota, then they get paid that week.
It's well-known that the farmers have crappy Internet connections with high latency. Known farmers on PvP servers in WoW completely suck at PvP, in part due to their connection and in part due to not doing anything in the game other than farming gold. They keep costs down by sharing accounts, several people to one account, and probably either share one high-speed Internet connection or push the costs of dialup connection from home or via cafe onto the workers.
It wouldn't be that bad an idea for a radio telescope.
You could put a satellite in orbit around the moon and transmit data from the telescope to the satellite and then to Earth.
You'd have a very large substrate (the moon) for building a very large telescope (think Arecibo). You could also use the moon to block out Earth sources of radio interference. During the time when the telescope faced the Sun, you could conduct solar observation experiments instead.
Not the most readable link, and definitely not very technical. It also doesn't suggest exactly what I mentioned, but rather the possibility that our brane could be folded back on itself, permitting gravitons to pass from one section of a brane to another section faster than photons can because the folded section is much closer when you don't have to stay on the brane. These "shadows" of other matter on our brane would thus account for dark matter.
Slashdot Mirror
There's really no such thing as "no judicial review". All someone has to do is get a court to rule that the no judicial review law violates the separation of powers and then issue an injunction.
BTW, Ohio licenses already have all those features.
Part of the bill forbids states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens, and other parts of the bill are designed to make obtaining a license illegally more difficult. If these safeguards had been in place several years ago, Mohammed Atta would have been arrested and deported for his expired visa violation when he presented his license to the feds at the airport.
The problem with the quote in the parent post is that Rep. Davis spoke poorly, though I suppose it could make sense if you assume that "who they say they are" includes being a legal resident of the US.
Modern day version of "Papers, please!"
We've already had this for a long time: it's called "License, registration, and proof of insurance, please."
Let's take a survey. Reply to this post with the state you live in and whether or not your state's driver's licenses already have, or will have in the near future due to changes in state law, the following features mandated by this bill:
(1) The person's full legal name.
(2) The person's date of birth.
(3) The person's gender.
(4) The person's driver's license or identification card number.
(5) A digital photograph of the person.
(6) The person's address of principle residence.
(7) The person's signature.
(8) Physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes.
(9) A common machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements.
For the purposes of #9, I'm going to assume that a magnetic stripe is acceptable.
EA Looking to Increase Stake in UbiSoft
Is this the money kind of stake, or the wooden kind?
Did it ever occur to you that two intelligent enlightened people can have an honest disagreement over politics?
That's what boggles my mind as well. If I present my nominally conservative opinions to a liberal audience of the Slashdot sort, no actual debate occurs because I am automagically wrong. (And yes, the Pat Robertson crowd does the same thing.) I'm actually willing to listen to people with differing viewpoints, but I got tired of hearing "because I said so" as support for one's opinion when I was about eight.
By the way, I always figured that if there were ever a "Fuck" moderation category, it'd give +1.
Do you have any idea what natural selection is?
As a researcher in artificial evolution and genetic algorithms, I have a very good understanding of natural selection. Of course, I should have expected nothing less than an ad hominem attack on Slashdot.
It means that if you possess some genetic advantage, you will have a better chance to survive and procreate, and therefore pass your advantage to the next generation. Same thing applies to genetic disadvantages.
Exactly. If a genetic disadvantage is made to have a lesser detrimental effect on reproductive fitness, then that disadvantageous trait will appear more often in the future.
Most diseases that stem cell research holds a promise to cure are either unrelated to genetic defects (paralysis) or don't usually show up until the carrier is in his/her 50s. By that time, chances are they've already had children if they wanted them.
This is a dodge around my earlier example, as I mentioned specifically the use of embryonic stem cells to treat genetic abnormalities. Implied (though I suppose I should have been explicit) was the treatment of diseases which are apparent before or at reproductive age.
Perhaps I also should have provided the better example of cloning (with gene therapy) for organ harvest, rather than stem cell harvest, since congenital organ defects quite often do severely affect the health of younger people. The viewpoint I am mentioning here would indicate that this is unethical as well, regardless of whether the embryo is altered to make the resulting clone anencephalic.
with no grasp of basic concepts of Biology
Care to expound upon that? I have a feeling that I can make reasonable refutations to any argument you might present while still remaining well within the bounds of biology.
Captain, I can compensate using *strange word* to modulate *strange word* ...
We are all *happy campers* who like *parties*. But when we are *frumple* we like to *dance* with the *sad campers*.
Then why are high-level eBayed characters so easily detected by other players? No, wait, I'll answer that for you - it's because the purchaser of the eBayed character lacks the skills to back up the gear and experience possessed by the character. These skills are obtained naturally by spending time learning the game through levelling up one's own character.
On the other hand, my old C-64 would periodically get filled with dust to the point where it would overheat after about a half hour of operation. The two workarounds we figured out were to point a box fan at it or to open it up and vacuum out all the dust.
It's not nearly as cut-and-dried as you believe. For example, a person could make the claim that by using embryonic stem cells to heal diseases caused by genetic defects, we are preventing natural selection from weeding out those genetic defects, causing more people to suffer from those diseases in the (very) long run.
Also, some people believe that human embryos are human lives (and they don't have to be Religious to feel that way), and feel that sacrificing some lives for the prolonging of other lives is unethical.
You don't have to be a Christian - or, for that matter, a non-atheist - to believe that an embryo is a human life.
Then again, there's always that smashing success known as The Sims Online, boasting a decline in subscriber totals down to roughly 36k, from a peak of 105k in mid-2003.
Grandstanding, perhaps. But astroturfing? This guy's no Roland Piquepaille - you could download the PDF of the story without viewing a single advertisement.
Let's think about it. What makes these goods more "virtual" (ie not-real) than MP3 music or videos? No, really?
That'd be the Terms of Usage for the game, which states that the items are not the property of the player and cannot be sold for real-life compensation.
The concept of a third-world "sweatshop" producing these goods is ridiculous. Why would someone spend a large amount of money buying expensive gear and paying for difficult to obtain broadband connections in the 3rd world, where they'd be experiencing substantial delay lags with the servers running online games in the U.S.? He can get the same goods from idle american teenagers looking for a little extra cash who already have all the latest gear, without spending any money himself.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think you're missing the point here. What's going on is that people in foreign countries (e.g., China) are employing locals to play the game and farm in-game gold and/or items. They then sell the gold and/or items on third-party auction sites to wealthy American or European players for RL cash. If one of the employees meets a quota, then they get paid that week.
It's well-known that the farmers have crappy Internet connections with high latency. Known farmers on PvP servers in WoW completely suck at PvP, in part due to their connection and in part due to not doing anything in the game other than farming gold. They keep costs down by sharing accounts, several people to one account, and probably either share one high-speed Internet connection or push the costs of dialup connection from home or via cafe onto the workers.
Hopefully, the school's CS degree program also has a hefty ethics course requirement.
And then they became wildly popular, despite abandoning established canon from the original series.
Damn kids.
Prof. Farnsworth: "Oh, the Jedis are going to feel this one!"
It wouldn't be that bad an idea for a radio telescope.
You could put a satellite in orbit around the moon and transmit data from the telescope to the satellite and then to Earth.
You'd have a very large substrate (the moon) for building a very large telescope (think Arecibo). You could also use the moon to block out Earth sources of radio interference. During the time when the telescope faced the Sun, you could conduct solar observation experiments instead.
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/n ature/journal/v411/n6841/full/411986a0_r.html&file type=&dynoptions=
Not the most readable link, and definitely not very technical. It also doesn't suggest exactly what I mentioned, but rather the possibility that our brane could be folded back on itself, permitting gravitons to pass from one section of a brane to another section faster than photons can because the folded section is much closer when you don't have to stay on the brane. These "shadows" of other matter on our brane would thus account for dark matter.
Gmail, of course!
The RIAA sued somebody for violating copyright.
The point is that the RIAA failed to take virtually any action to determine whether that somebody actually did anything wrong before suing them.