The founding fathers also had no intentions of protecting the rights of African-Americans? That's certainly what Chief Justice Taney asserted in the Dred Scott decision.
By misreading history, Taney concluded that the founding fathers did not intend African-Americans to be US citizens, and so they could not be made citizens by anything short of a constitutional amendment. Taney's assertions were hotly contested by many statesmen of the day, including Abraham Lincoln.
Taney's view can be explained by his growing up as a white Southerner in the early 19th century, but I'm at a loss to explain why you, a modern-day observer, would agree with Taney and disagree with Lincoln.
Since all geostationary satellites are over the equator, their positions are given by one simple longitude value. Therefore, when someone says that the position is "over Arizona", a reasonable interpretation is that it is at the same longitude as Arizona.
However, this turns out not to be true. Starband satellites are at 101 and 129 degrees West longitude. Referred to US geography, these longitudes correspond to the middle of Texas, and to a point in the Pacific ocean about 600 miles West of Los Angeles.
Well, it's a two-edged sword. We're appalled at European levels of unemployment.
While job security is nice, job availability is even better. If you make it hard for an employer to fire someone, the employer will think longer and more carefully before hiring someone new. The result is a slower stream of new jobs.
IMAO, this dichotomy reflects the contrast between the egalitarian USA and the more stratified European society. European feudalism may be long dead, but its effects still persist.
To a significantly larger degree than in the USA, European workers consider themselves as a class apart from and in opposition to the employers. The American worker considers him/herself just as good as the employer, and can more easily see the economic forces the employer must deal with. (Indeed, many US workers _are_ the employer, to some extent, via stock ownership and stock options, or via independent contracting arrangements).
This is not to excuse the behavior of the Devine management, but rather to point out the two reactions that vitually all of their employees will take, depending on their resources and prospects:
either quit immediately, and look for new jobs full-time, or
retain their job, but look for new jobs in as much extra time as they can squeeze out.
This approach is, of course, more stressful than the paternalistic European model, but it is also more lucrative, for both employer and employee (who, as I mentioned above, may be the same), since it provides the flexibility needed to adapt to fast-moving technologies and markets.
Yes it is. However, the US Presidential election is governed by the US Constitution. The Florida Supreme Court is the final arbiter as to the Florida constitution, but not the federal one.
"...they're making money on this goldmine that they're collecting and publishing reports about..."
Making money? Goldmine? I wish. TiVo is losing money hand over fist. My worst fear in that regard is that they don't find a way to turn a profit soon enough (and the capital markets haven't been too patient lately), my excellent TiVo box will turn into a boat anchor.
If you're so worried about the data TiVo gathers about you, just tell them to stop. Myself, I don't give a rat's ass that they know what people in my zipcode (or even my 9-digit zipcode) are watching.
The broadcasters' agreement is not with the FCC, but with Congress.
The broadcasters agreed to provide favorable coverage to incumbent members of congress. In return, and Congress agreed to give them, free of charge, vast swaths of spectrum worth billions and billions of dollars. The broadcasters would theoretically have to give back the old spectrum they currently use (and also never paid for), but the prerequisites for the spectrum giveback will not be met. (Surprise, surprise!)
Of course, now that the broadcasters and Congress have robbed the taxpayers once, they want to do it again by letting them sell their old spectrum (remember, they didn't pay for that spectrum either). Also, now that the 'Free over-the-air HDTV' cover story has done its job, it can be quietly dropped, and pesky restrictions on the broadcaster's valuable new property are no longer needed. Pretty soon, we'll see that the broadcasters own both the new and old spectrum outright, with no restrictions on use or resale.
It goes without saying that the broadcasters won't pay the government one red cent for the spectrum, since they hold a currency even more valuable in Washington: control of media exposure.
This decision in no way lets "all states put whatever rules they care to pass on E-mail". It rather lets them do so under a narrow set of circumstances, which will be difficult if not impossible to satisfy outside the UCE context.
In particular, such laws must serve an 'important public interest' whose benefits outweigh 'the burdens on interstate commerce'. It's hard to imagine a non-UCE restriction meeting this level of justification.
Even without this decision, e-mail is hardly immune from state law. Libel, fraud, trade secret, business licensing and taxation law are only some of the topics on which an e-mail sender may need to know the state laws applying in the recipient's domicile. Do you think that state fraud laws oughtn't apply to e-mail? Do you think there should be a constitutional right to forge e-mail headers in order to deceive the recipient?
Finally, if there is a proliferation of inconsistent (but still justified) state anti-spam laws, the remedy is clear: Congress can wipe them all out and create a consistent set of rules by passing a federal anti-spam law. Until Congress moves on this, we must do what we can. What we can do now is press for state laws like those in Washington and California.
While the first-generation TiVO upgrade procedure was (apparently) somewhat painful, the current procedure is very easy. Using the Hinsdale How-to TiVO Upgrade guide, I was able to upgrade my TiVO in two hours, including a backup of my original drive.
My formerly 40-hour TiVO now has a 130-hour capacity. I love it!
Re:One simple reason why it won't work:
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I would suggest that you try thinking through the poster's comments before engaging in ignorant-American bashing.
The United States does have true labor mobility. Moving from one section of the US to another for economic advantage is not only easy, it is very common. In addition to the lack of legal barriers, there are no language barriers and few cultural ones.
Are you asserting that the average Parisian, having just been layed off, could and would chase jobs in Berlin? The average Detroiter could and would do so in Dallas. The Parisian is prevented from doing this, but the barrier is de facto rather than de jure as you seem to assume. From a macroeconomic perspective, it amounts to the same thing: the workers do not, in fact, move.
Actually, I consider the Christian element in LOTR to be more remarkable than that of the Perelandra books, because it is deeper and more subtle.
Lewis is quite up-front about the moral and theological bases of his imaginary universe, and his protagonists often mull over (for the reader's benefit) the moral dimensions of newly-discovered worlds and creatures.
As has been mentioned, Tolkein quite consciously removed any overt religious elements from LOTR, but be did so only to highlight the underlying relgious/moral message, and to make it more accessible. In this he succeeded magnificently.
MAPS is not saying that you are, or have ever been, a spammer. It's merely saying that you belong to a class of users that tends to generate a lot of spam when making direct SMTP connections. This class of users almost always has the ability to send email indirectly via its ISP's servers, so blocking direct connections will seldom be a problem.
Furthermore, MAPS is not a tyrant. Tyrants use force, or the threat of force, to enforce their edicts. MAPS uses nothing but persuasion.
Modification is irrelevant. If they copied and distributed the software, modified or not, they need a license to do so. The GPL gives them such a license, but only if they distribute source code or make an offer to do so. The big no-no is not modifying the code, but failing to provide the source.
But why do you think that if the GPL is 'overturned' in court, that it would be safe for anyone to use GPL'd software? It's copyrighted software, and without a license, anyone who is copying or distributing it is in deep legal peril. Anyone who 'overturned' the GPL would be in worse shape than when he started, since he would have no defense against an infringement suit.
Tolkien did not say that. What he did say is that LOtR is not an allegory of WWII. But events shape the man, and the man shapes the writing. Living through WWII must have affected Tolkien's work, as his fighting in WWI certainly did.
The War of the Ring does not mimic WWII, as Tolkien's comments make clear. However, one can easily speculate that some the atmosphere of the 'real world' seeped into Middle Earth as it was being created. For example, the dire state of Frodo's homeland in the beginning of "The Scouring of the Shire" clearly has parallels in the conditions Tolkien endured in postwar Britain. Other parallels, of greater or lesser validity, can readily suggest themselves.
The real problem is: how far do you peel back the onion? Why stop with assembler?
Thirty years ago, I learned machine code to program the PDP-8. Why not teach that today? Or why not go further down and teach VLSI processor design, or semiconductor physics?
The answer is, of course, a tradeoff. Learning any of these things is potentially of value, but one must compare that potential value to the time and energy investment required. I submit that for most CS students today, the effort in learning assembler is not worth the benefit. It is therefore more appropriate for an elective rather than a core course, and has been for some years.
A more interesting question is the current value of studying C after learning an object-oriented language. The tradeoff there is much more difficult, and I don't have a strong opinion one way or another.
On its face, the
"Language of Commerce and Business" section of Quebec's language law applies to all non-French languages equally, but everyone knows that its primary target is the use of English.
Perhaps at some time in the past, the the UK government did 'recognize' Sealand as not part of the UK. Even so, there's nothing to prevent the government from changing its mind now.
No other country would lift a finger to stop the UK from reclaiming Sealand, if it chose to do so. The only thing that might stop it would be if the UK courts ruled it illegal. Even in that case, the courts could be overruled by an Act of Parliament. If the ??AA can buy an Act of Congress (the DMCA), an Act to extinguish Sealand should come relatively cheap.
We may never know, but we can make an awfully good guess. Based on independent recounts of the Florida ballots, it is pretty clear that if the US Supreme Court had not stepped in, and the Florida Supreme Court's recount order had been carried out, Bush still would have won.
The problem is that 'The Supreme Court stole the election' is now an article of faith among many disappointed voters, and no amount of evidence will persuade them otherwise.
I see. Even if a voucher program unleashes a vast new demand for lower-cost private schools, the supply side of the private education market will utterly unaffected. The post-voucher market will be precisely equivalent to what we see now. Not one new school will be founded to serve voucher families at tuitions they can afford.
I beg to differ. Just because upper-crust schools now charge $10,000/yr for tuition does not mean that a quality education needs to cost that much. The current schools are charging what the current (elite) market will bear. Vouchers will change that.
I don't know. We have seen a judge rule that something is still 'secret', even after being published worldwide on the Internet and numerous other media (including T-shirts!), taught in college courses, and still available from hundreds of sites at the click of a mouse.
When the courts pervert IP law to that extent, what depths of absurdity are needed to make something incredible?
Right now, there is a crying need for spectrum to support novel (digital) wireless applications. Five years from now, the spectrum shortage will be far worse.
In spite of this, each US TV station now has been given, free of charge, a lock on 12 MHz of prime spectrum (6 MHz analog and 6 MHz digital). This is despite the fact that all they would need for a crystal-clear standard-definition digital TV signal would be 1-2 MHz of spectrum. The 'digital TV transition' seems to be dead in the water, especially with the FCC's recent refusal to impose digital must-carry rules on cable operators.
Will the broadcasters ever be made to give up this spectrum grab? Will the only solution be to let them sell this spectrum (that they got for free) to the highest bidder?
Unfortunately, the offshore manufacturers will still be subject to MPAA control if they want to ship their products to the US, because the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits 'circumvention devices', and any unlicensed electronics which decode the digital bitstream would come under the prohibition. That is one reason why the MPAA and RIAA purchased the DMCA in the first place.
No matter how the court cases turn out, the Republicans have the
power to ensure that Bush is elected President. This is because
they control:
both houses of the Florida Legislature,
the Florida Governorship, and
the newly-elected U.S. House of Representatives.
If things go badly in the courts, the Florida Legislature can
appoint electors directly (presumably electors favoring Bush). The
the final judgement as to the legality of this move will be made by
the Congress in January, when the votes are counted.
Federal law (3USC15) specifies how the counting
is done. If there is an objection to a state's electoral vote (there almost surely would be such
an objection if the Florida Legislature appointed the electors directly), the objection is
considered by the new Congress. If both House
and Senate reject the state's vote, it is not counted. If more than one vote is presented (for
example, one certified by the Governor, and one
by the Florida Supreme Court), then the House
and Senate, acting together, will choose the
vote that will be counted.
If it came to such a point, we can assume that the new House (controlled by
Republicans) would favor Bush, and the new Senate (tied 50-50) would favor
Gore, with Gore himself casting the tie-breaking vote. The Congress would
therefore be deadlocked. In that case, according to federal law, the state's vote would not
be rejected, and if more than one set of votes were presented, the vote
certified by the Governor (Jeb Bush, George W.'s brother) would be counted.
Therefore, the Republican Florida legislature can now ensure Bush's election,
if it so chooses.
Republican party officials did not request absentee ballots 'instead of the voter'. What happened is that each party printed up its own absentee ballot applications (apparently this is the normal procedure there), but the Republican applications had an error: no space for the newly-required voter ID number!
The local Republican party asked for permission to correct the error, and was allowed to fill in the voter ID numbers. The Democrats did not make the same mistake on their applications, and did not ask for permission to fill in incomplete applicatons.
In the heated election debate, this correction of a clerical oversight has been mischaracterized in all sorts of ways, from Bryan's error above, to crys of "BALLOT TAMPERING!!!".
Hopefully, the Florida courts will have the same zeal in preserving the 'right to vote' for Republicans in Seminole County as they have for Democrats in Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade Counties.
Slashdot Mirror
The founding fathers also had no intentions of protecting the rights of African-Americans? That's certainly what Chief Justice Taney asserted in the Dred Scott decision.
By misreading history, Taney concluded that the founding fathers did not intend African-Americans to be US citizens, and so they could not be made citizens by anything short of a constitutional amendment. Taney's assertions were hotly contested by many statesmen of the day, including Abraham Lincoln.
Taney's view can be explained by his growing up as a white Southerner in the early 19th century, but I'm at a loss to explain why you, a modern-day observer, would agree with Taney and disagree with Lincoln.
Since all geostationary satellites are over the equator, their positions are given by one simple longitude value. Therefore, when someone says that the position is "over Arizona", a reasonable interpretation is that it is at the same longitude as Arizona.
However, this turns out not to be true. Starband satellites are at 101 and 129 degrees West longitude. Referred to US geography, these longitudes correspond to the middle of Texas, and to a point in the Pacific ocean about 600 miles West of Los Angeles.
There you go, storming the Bastille again.
While job security is nice, job availability is even better. If you make it hard for an employer to fire someone, the employer will think longer and more carefully before hiring someone new. The result is a slower stream of new jobs.
IMAO, this dichotomy reflects the contrast between the egalitarian USA and the more stratified European society. European feudalism may be long dead, but its effects still persist.
To a significantly larger degree than in the USA, European workers consider themselves as a class apart from and in opposition to the employers. The American worker considers him/herself just as good as the employer, and can more easily see the economic forces the employer must deal with. (Indeed, many US workers _are_ the employer, to some extent, via stock ownership and stock options, or via independent contracting arrangements).
This is not to excuse the behavior of the Devine management, but rather to point out the two reactions that vitually all of their employees will take, depending on their resources and prospects:
This approach is, of course, more stressful than the paternalistic European model, but it is also more lucrative, for both employer and employee (who, as I mentioned above, may be the same), since it provides the flexibility needed to adapt to fast-moving technologies and markets.
Yes it is. However, the US Presidential election is governed by the US Constitution. The Florida Supreme Court is the final arbiter as to the Florida constitution, but not the federal one.
"...they're making money on this goldmine that they're collecting and publishing reports about..."
Making money? Goldmine? I wish. TiVo is losing money hand over fist. My worst fear in that regard is that they don't find a way to turn a profit soon enough (and the capital markets haven't been too patient lately), my excellent TiVo box will turn into a boat anchor.
If you're so worried about the data TiVo gathers about you, just tell them to stop. Myself, I don't give a rat's ass that they know what people in my zipcode (or even my 9-digit zipcode) are watching.
The broadcasters' agreement is not with the FCC, but with Congress.
The broadcasters agreed to provide favorable coverage to incumbent members of congress. In return, and Congress agreed to give them, free of charge, vast swaths of spectrum worth billions and billions of dollars. The broadcasters would theoretically have to give back the old spectrum they currently use (and also never paid for), but the prerequisites for the spectrum giveback will not be met. (Surprise, surprise!)
Of course, now that the broadcasters and Congress have robbed the taxpayers once, they want to do it again by letting them sell their old spectrum (remember, they didn't pay for that spectrum either). Also, now that the 'Free over-the-air HDTV' cover story has done its job, it can be quietly dropped, and pesky restrictions on the broadcaster's valuable new property are no longer needed. Pretty soon, we'll see that the broadcasters own both the new and old spectrum outright, with no restrictions on use or resale.
It goes without saying that the broadcasters won't pay the government one red cent for the spectrum, since they hold a currency even more valuable in Washington: control of media exposure.
This decision in no way lets "all states put whatever rules they care to pass on E-mail". It rather lets them do so under a narrow set of circumstances, which will be difficult if not impossible to satisfy outside the UCE context.
In particular, such laws must serve an 'important public interest' whose benefits outweigh 'the burdens on interstate commerce'. It's hard to imagine a non-UCE restriction meeting this level of justification.
Even without this decision, e-mail is hardly immune from state law. Libel, fraud, trade secret, business licensing and taxation law are only some of the topics on which an e-mail sender may need to know the state laws applying in the recipient's domicile. Do you think that state fraud laws oughtn't apply to e-mail? Do you think there should be a constitutional right to forge e-mail headers in order to deceive the recipient?
Finally, if there is a proliferation of inconsistent (but still justified) state anti-spam laws, the remedy is clear: Congress can wipe them all out and create a consistent set of rules by passing a federal anti-spam law. Until Congress moves on this, we must do what we can. What we can do now is press for state laws like those in Washington and California.
While the first-generation TiVO upgrade procedure was (apparently) somewhat painful, the current procedure is very easy. Using the Hinsdale How-to TiVO Upgrade guide, I was able to upgrade my TiVO in two hours, including a backup of my original drive.
My formerly 40-hour TiVO now has a 130-hour capacity. I love it!
I would suggest that you try thinking through the poster's comments before engaging in ignorant-American bashing.
The United States does have true labor mobility. Moving from one section of the US to another for economic advantage is not only easy, it is very common. In addition to the lack of legal barriers, there are no language barriers and few cultural ones.
Are you asserting that the average Parisian, having just been layed off, could and would chase jobs in Berlin? The average Detroiter could and would do so in Dallas. The Parisian is prevented from doing this, but the barrier is de facto rather than de jure as you seem to assume. From a macroeconomic perspective, it amounts to the same thing: the workers do not, in fact, move.
Actually, I consider the Christian element in LOTR to be more remarkable than that of the Perelandra books, because it is deeper and more subtle.
Lewis is quite up-front about the moral and theological bases of his imaginary universe, and his protagonists often mull over (for the reader's benefit) the moral dimensions of newly-discovered worlds and creatures.
As has been mentioned, Tolkein quite consciously removed any overt religious elements from LOTR, but be did so only to highlight the underlying relgious/moral message, and to make it more accessible. In this he succeeded magnificently.
MAPS is not saying that you are, or have ever been, a spammer. It's merely saying that you belong to a class of users that tends to generate a lot of spam when making direct SMTP connections. This class of users almost always has the ability to send email indirectly via its ISP's servers, so blocking direct connections will seldom be a problem.
Furthermore, MAPS is not a tyrant. Tyrants use force, or the threat of force, to enforce their edicts. MAPS uses nothing but persuasion.
Modification is irrelevant. If they copied and distributed the software, modified or not, they need a license to do so. The GPL gives them such a license, but only if they distribute source code or make an offer to do so. The big no-no is not modifying the code, but failing to provide the source.
But why do you think that if the GPL is 'overturned' in court, that it would be safe for anyone to use GPL'd software? It's copyrighted software, and without a license, anyone who is copying or distributing it is in deep legal peril. Anyone who 'overturned' the GPL would be in worse shape than when he started, since he would have no defense against an infringement suit.
Linux Labs will happily sell you clusters, either in standard or custom configurations.
My rough estimate from reading their website is that a 10-node 1.33-GHz Athlon cluster from them would price out at something like $16-17k.
Tolkien did not say that. What he did say is that LOtR is not an allegory of WWII. But events shape the man, and the man shapes the writing. Living through WWII must have affected Tolkien's work, as his fighting in WWI certainly did.
The War of the Ring does not mimic WWII, as Tolkien's comments make clear. However, one can easily speculate that some the atmosphere of the 'real world' seeped into Middle Earth as it was being created. For example, the dire state of Frodo's homeland in the beginning of "The Scouring of the Shire" clearly has parallels in the conditions Tolkien endured in postwar Britain. Other parallels, of greater or lesser validity, can readily suggest themselves.
The real problem is: how far do you peel back the onion? Why stop with assembler?
Thirty years ago, I learned machine code to program the PDP-8. Why not teach that today? Or why not go further down and teach VLSI processor design, or semiconductor physics?
The answer is, of course, a tradeoff. Learning any of these things is potentially of value, but one must compare that potential value to the time and energy investment required. I submit that for most CS students today, the effort in learning assembler is not worth the benefit. It is therefore more appropriate for an elective rather than a core course, and has been for some years.
A more interesting question is the current value of studying C after learning an object-oriented language. The tradeoff there is much more difficult, and I don't have a strong opinion one way or another.
7402
Perhaps at some time in the past, the the UK government did 'recognize' Sealand as not part of the UK. Even so, there's nothing to prevent the government from changing its mind now.
No other country would lift a finger to stop the UK from reclaiming Sealand, if it chose to do so. The only thing that might stop it would be if the UK courts ruled it illegal. Even in that case, the courts could be overruled by an Act of Parliament. If the ??AA can buy an Act of Congress (the DMCA), an Act to extinguish Sealand should come relatively cheap.
We may never know, but we can make an awfully good guess. Based on independent recounts of the Florida ballots, it is pretty clear that if the US Supreme Court had not stepped in, and the Florida Supreme Court's recount order had been carried out, Bush still would have won.
The problem is that 'The Supreme Court stole the election' is now an article of faith among many disappointed voters, and no amount of evidence will persuade them otherwise.
I see. Even if a voucher program unleashes a vast new demand for lower-cost private schools, the supply side of the private education market will utterly unaffected. The post-voucher market will be precisely equivalent to what we see now. Not one new school will be founded to serve voucher families at tuitions they can afford.
I beg to differ. Just because upper-crust schools now charge $10,000/yr for tuition does not mean that a quality education needs to cost that much. The current schools are charging what the current (elite) market will bear. Vouchers will change that.
I don't know. We have seen a judge rule that something is still 'secret', even after being published worldwide on the Internet and numerous other media (including T-shirts!), taught in college courses, and still available from hundreds of sites at the click of a mouse.
When the courts pervert IP law to that extent, what depths of absurdity are needed to make something incredible?
In spite of this, each US TV station now has been given, free of charge, a lock on 12 MHz of prime spectrum (6 MHz analog and 6 MHz digital). This is despite the fact that all they would need for a crystal-clear standard-definition digital TV signal would be 1-2 MHz of spectrum. The 'digital TV transition' seems to be dead in the water, especially with the FCC's recent refusal to impose digital must-carry rules on cable operators.
Will the broadcasters ever be made to give up this spectrum grab? Will the only solution be to let them sell this spectrum (that they got for free) to the highest bidder?
Unfortunately, the offshore manufacturers will still be subject to MPAA control if they want to ship their products to the US, because the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits 'circumvention devices', and any unlicensed electronics which decode the digital bitstream would come under the prohibition. That is one reason why the MPAA and RIAA purchased the DMCA in the first place.
If things go badly in the courts, the Florida Legislature can appoint electors directly (presumably electors favoring Bush). The the final judgement as to the legality of this move will be made by the Congress in January, when the votes are counted.
Federal law (3USC15) specifies how the counting is done. If there is an objection to a state's electoral vote (there almost surely would be such an objection if the Florida Legislature appointed the electors directly), the objection is considered by the new Congress. If both House and Senate reject the state's vote, it is not counted. If more than one vote is presented (for example, one certified by the Governor, and one by the Florida Supreme Court), then the House and Senate, acting together, will choose the vote that will be counted.
If it came to such a point, we can assume that the new House (controlled by Republicans) would favor Bush, and the new Senate (tied 50-50) would favor Gore, with Gore himself casting the tie-breaking vote. The Congress would therefore be deadlocked. In that case, according to federal law, the state's vote would not be rejected, and if more than one set of votes were presented, the vote certified by the Governor (Jeb Bush, George W.'s brother) would be counted.
Therefore, the Republican Florida legislature can now ensure Bush's election, if it so chooses.
Republican party officials did not request absentee ballots 'instead of the voter'. What happened is that each party printed up its own absentee ballot applications (apparently this is the normal procedure there), but the Republican applications had an error: no space for the newly-required voter ID number!
The local Republican party asked for permission to correct the error, and was allowed to fill in the voter ID numbers. The Democrats did not make the same mistake on their applications, and did not ask for permission to fill in incomplete applicatons.
In the heated election debate, this correction of a clerical oversight has been mischaracterized in all sorts of ways, from Bryan's error above, to crys of "BALLOT TAMPERING!!!".
Hopefully, the Florida courts will have the same zeal in preserving the 'right to vote' for Republicans in Seminole County as they have for Democrats in Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade Counties.