In fact, the states have the power to disolve the federal government, the federal government has no such reciprical power over the state governments.
As much as our Constitution was designed around States' rights, that all went out in 1865. Sorry.
The thing is, you're both right. The original purpose of the Constitution and States' Rights was that the federal government located off in the middle of butt-fucking Egypt doesn't know enough about any specific area to govern it properly. This was something they learned about the King of England trying to rule America like it was downtown London, which it wasn't. The rules needed to be different, but the English crown wouldn't let them. This hasn't changed for America, in each state the rules need to be different. Montana and Alaska, for example, are very large states that are sparsely populated. Does it make sense, then, that to travel from one town to another in either of those states you should be limited to 60 mph? OTOH, it makes perfect sense (to many, at least) to limit speed limits in NY to 60mph because of the combination of weather and traffic congestion. Texas, on the other hand, is large, and it makes sense to have higher speed limits, but is also well-populated. But because of weather conditions, a higher speed limit is more practical. So a central government in Washington DC would tend not to notice and make a single speed limit for the convenience of its citizens, knowing that it may inconvenience the sparsely populated states of Alaska and Montana, and also knowing that that was fine because they don't account for many of the voters anyway.
So State Rights is all about putting as much governing power as possible in the hands of state legislatures so that people can govern themselves locally. That's your point expanded, I think. It is my understanding of hte issue, anyway.
OTOH, the idiot that started this discussion is right to the extent that technological advances have reached a point where it may make sense or even be necessary to take a subset of law and centralize it a bit. Incorporation is a good example, and also a bad example. Some tax laws. How much money is spent that is not taxed just because it was spent over the internet and was interstate? Now that I'm complaining, mind you, but addressing that issue in a Useful fashion would certainly create more revenue for the states, theoretically giving them more money to work for their citizens. There may be other laws, that it would make sense to do this with.
However, the initial concept of states' rights still remains. The federal government in Washington DC is still unqualified to make these sorts of laws for, say, WA, OR, and ID as a group. What would be better, in my opinion, is if the states authorized the creation of a series of midlevel governments who dealt solely with interstate issues, and removed the power to address interstate issues from the federal government completely. That would decentralize the feds at the nominal risk of providing central regional governments.
Blah, I don't really care when you get right down to it. I don't want the feds trampling all over states' rights or individual rights, and our system is already so broke it's gonna take more than replacing a few parts and some minor machining to fix it. I woudl argue it was broke from the get-go.
In any case, States lost most of their rights at the conclusion of the Civil War, because now the Feds have precedent to use force of arms to whip states into obedience. It was good that slavery was finally outlawed, but that was probably the only good thing that came of it.
It's enforced on businesses by a draconian policy of auditing every business regularly. When I had a business in WA, my accountant told me you always pay use tax because they will audit you.
For individuals, the only item I am aware of that they can enforce it on is a car. When you register your car you have to demonstrate that you paid sales tax on it wherever you bought it. If you can't, you pay use tax in WA. You are still required to pay use tax on everything else, but it's difficult to enforce, so there's naturally lots of sales tax revenue the state isn't getting. Expect them to cry RIAA-style about it, it'll happen.
As far as I know, though, WA is the only weird state with that sort of law. I wouldn't be surprised if several other states around Oregon have similar laws, though, just because of Oregon. In all the years I've lived in various states in this country, WA is the only state where I encountered "use tax". So I conclude that the GP (or whoever was talking about use tax) lives in WA, and like all people who live in WA, thinks that the way it is in WA is the way it is everywhere.
Gawd I can't stand that place, I'm so happy I don't lvie there anymore.
6 weeks early and first trimester are completely different things.
You see, your body (well, a woman's body) can and will abort babies on its own from time to time. In the first trimester it's generally ignored, you miss a few periods, have a particularly heavy one, and move on. in the second trimester it depends on the baby, but by then you'r eusually aware you're pregnant and it's considered a miscarriage.
In the third trimester, it's a premature birth and every effort is made to save the baby.
My daughter was 5-7 weeks early (the doctors never managed to agree), and she weighed 6 lbs. She's still huge.;) Years ago, though, my wife's body rejected a baby a few weeks after it was conceived.
Killing babies, though... man. That's a moral issue, not a religious one. Even the most vocal proponent of "choice," which is just a euphamism for "death," Mrs. Roe is now wishing that she hadn't had an abortion. Not only is it mindless killing, it is also a psychological burden to most would-have-been mothers.
Turning it into a "killing babies" issue is just a smokescreen to get behind the real reason abortion is so threatening. It empowers women. Historically, it has always been possible for a man to walk away form a woman he left pregnant. The simple fact that a woman has a more or less permanent attachment to her baby is exactly what allowed men to enslave women in the first place. Abortion equalizes that biological fact, so that now women and men still need each other to have a baby, but a woman now has the freedom to behave just as irresponsibly towards that baby as the man has.
That has the net result of equalizing women in society and empowering them. Remove it and you open the doors to subjugating women once again and dragging them back into the ages of slavery. Is that what you really want?
Yes, it's wrong to kill babies. It's also wrong to enslave someone purely because of their gender, color, etc. Every baby that dies protects the rights of the mother to behave just as irresopnsibly as men have always had the right to behave. This moves the problem away from the courts of law and into society, where we need to deal with people behaving irresponsibly.
So think of it like this: Women are now telling us "You men start behaving yourselves and take care of your babies or we'll kill them". Historically, what other choice have women had? Don't want someone to get an abortion? Take responsibility for the kid.
After we get these things in line and solve the basic problem, we can take another look at abortion. Also, the Roe v Wade decision does state quite explicitly that Congress can make laws regulating abortion, they just can't ban it. So they can make it safe (for the mother, I mean, obviously it cna't be safe for the baby). So, if you want to ban abortion, you first need to get everyone behaving responsibly. Then you need to get the procedures regulated so they're actually safe. Then, when all that's done, you need to take another look at it. I have a firm conviction that when you reach that ponit, you'll find that abortion as a medical procedure should be kept, becauise the issues you have with it will have been eliminated already.
The bible also says "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". Do you support the death penalty, in that case?
Ever considered that maybe the few commandments that are actually practical have a basis in something that's completely foreign to Christianity, like, oh I don't know, REASON?
Ghandi said "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind" (or something like that). It seems like Ghandi, a definite non-Christian, might have stumbled across the reason behind "Thou shalt not kill".
claim to be Christians and yet espouse anti-welfare, pro-death penalty, or pro-gun positions
I was always under the impression that the Gospel advocated justice, equality, peace, non-violence, respect for one's neighbor, and responsible stewardship of the Earth.
Ever hear of the Colt Peacemaker? Justice and peace come from the barrel of a gun. It's a hard fact of life, but without the freedom to act and the ability to support your words with NUCLEAR POWER, you have no justice, no peace, no equality, no non-violence, no respect, and no responsibility.
All basic "human" concepts derive from this. Jesus is dead not just because it all happened 2000 years ago, but also because he didn't back his words with NUCLEAR POWER. He *could* have lived in freedom, justice, and all that good stuff if he had just thrown a few lightning bolts around to make his point. But no, he didn't, so he's a martyr instead.
* Note the Civ reference is a joke, but isn't intended to make my post a joke
As a Texan, I found that while I didn't agree with exaclty the same caveats you had with Cobb, I liked pretty much everything else he said. In fact, his response to the copyright/patent question was music to my ears.
I'm going to check out Green a bit more seriously now, and they've just moved up a notch in my eyes. I might well wind up casting my vote his way, here in Texas.;)
I'm not saying I'm for or against GM food, but a candidate for the presidency of the united states could have produced a more intelligent argument aginst it than just calling it "frankenfood"
Yeah, he could've called it "evil-doers" or "draft-dodgers".
The only thing that irritates *me* about calling it Frankenfood is the high likelihood that the person saying it probably thinks Frankenstein was the Creature and doesn't realize the Creature never had a name! Frankenstein was the Creator.
Heh, as a Texan I like telling people we voted for Bush to get him out of Texas, since that was the only way we could get rid of him.:)
While I'll certainly agree that the platforms of the two parties are different, and many of the ideals that underly those platforms are different, the two parties are roughly the same in their capability to run the country, at this time. Which isn't very good. The system that's broke, however, is the uncompetitive system we've got. Or rather, the system is so highly competitive that there can only be two competitors, and that's the problem exactly. Fix that problem so that there will be more competitors in the market, and many of these other problems start to fix themselves. Then in 10 years or so, take another look and readjust.
Not putting serious attention into the Constitution itself and how we can make it better with each generation is the biggest mistake this country has made. I figure 10 new amendments need to be made every 10 years with a complete rewrite every 100 years (rewrite for clarity). That would keep the system up to date. The only problem is that the frequency of changes also significantly increases the possibilities to modify the system in a bad way and seize power.
I'll take the risk, I think. It's that or regular revolution, or falling down into a state of fascism. Pick one of those three, or come up with alternatives that work.
1. Buy an nvidia card if you're after 3d acceleration. The newer ATI cards are supposed to be well supported now (supposedly), and the older ones you can usually get supported with gato (except for my friggin MObility)
Also, thanks to some work by Monty of Xiph, ALSA is supposed to support most/all USB recording devices. This is largely because Monty uses one himself.
2. One word for you, FlightGear.
3. Linux audio is a bit buggy, generally speaking, but there are applications that *do* all of that. What's missing is tight integration, mostly, and in some cases stability. RoseGarden does MIDI (and is pretty unstable). Audacity does multi-track recording and mixing. Ardour does it as well, and some other things. There are several dj-type packages (including a tracker-based dj program), and several drum sequencers, with Hydrogen being the best, generally speaking.
As far as viable alternatives to your favorite applications? Beats me, but I make all my own music in Linux. What I'm lacking in is skill, sound engineering skill (I won't argue musical abilities, I'm happy with mine and always pushing them forward). So my personal bottleneck isn't software, it's personal ability.
Um, actually, flamebait doesn't mean it's a flame, it means that the post intended to attract flames. In other words, flamebait means "You're just trying to piss people off".
While I dont' disagree with you because I know people too well, I am curious how you know for a fact that your posts specifically have been modded down because the mod disagreed with what you wrote. I have noticed posts getting modded down that didn't seem to be obvious trolls or flamebait, and were very much on topic.
In any case, i disagree with a lot of the moderations that go on around here, but I still read at +1 because I just don't have time to sort through all the real trolls and flamebait. One particular caveat I have is 9/11 jokes being modded troll or flamebait or whatever. There's an obvious difference between a joke, a troll, and a flamebait. Sometimes a joke can be flamebait, but you'd really have to personally know the poster to know that the joke is flamebait, many of us post jokes that are intended to be laughed at by people who think it's funny and ignored by people who don't.
Anyway, I need to get some sleep and hope my headache goes away. No more posting because I'll probably get modded as flamebait.
I actually prefer case sensitivity, but the whitespace thing gets on me nerves. Granted I don't exactly have a solution so I'm willing to live with the problem, but ti still gets on my nerves.
At least the escape method is consistent. And * works for 99% of the situations you have to deal with spaces in filenames in bash.
Actually, cross-dressing is defined generally as "dressing up like the opposite sex", and a sexual thrill is associated with the act. So a cross-dressing first grade teacher could just be a man wearing frilly panties and growing a few extra boners throughout the day, then going home and banging the shit out of his wife.
There is no association between cross-dressing and homosexuality, although it's likely that there is a higher rate of cross-dressers among homosexuals simply because to live as a homosexual in thsi society you already have to disregard a number of annoying and pointless taboos. So, heterosexuals are less likely to cross-dress because they're too uptight, basically.
There does also appear to be preference to types of clothes that can be linked to gender, but I know of no scientific work actually done on this. Only subjective experience can I offer on that, specifically.
As far as bringing sexual issues to younger children? How else would you arm them against the pedophiles that are out there (statistically speaking, there's one near you)? How else would you prepare them for the confusion of the years when their sexuality will dominate their lives? How else would you arm them against the other kids whose parents have failed miserably to teach them about those same sexual issues?
We've been talking to our kids about sex since before any of them could talk. We talk about what they're capable of understanding at this level, but they've seen things. My older son and my daughter both watched the baby being born. So they saw the kid actually come out of my wife's pussy. They were quite impressed.:) They understand that in the general case a man and a woman are required to put the baby there, and they understand a few other things. None of that "stork" bullshit, and you definitely won't find my kids coming up with "babies come out of their mommies butts, ears, mouths, or whatever". (Maybe the last one will, since he doesn't get to watch a younger sibling get born, but we'll deal with it somehow)
You want healthy sexuality? Treat it like reading and start teaching them what they are capable of learning as soon as they are capable of learning it.
I just wnated to point out that absolute good and absolute evil, as presented in the old testament, can be more readily defined as "You're either with us or against us", where "us" means God.
Think about that for a minute.
God has an annoying PR department, and can only generate FUD for the "other guy". Remove the FUD or the "other guy" and God fizzles.
Of course Coral cache is down. The ironing is delicious.;)
Wow, I've never tasted ironing before. Does it taste like irony?
Re:Terraforming or ecosynthesising mars
on
Making Tracks on Mars
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I was actually thinking about shipping oil and gasoline out there.:) Use bottled oxygen and use IC engines for transportation. That's a sure way to fill up the atmosphere with CO2. Then in selected areas, inject nitrogen into the atmosphere and just grow plants. Do that for awhile and eventually you have an entire planet capable of supporting human life!
Of course, if you were using Konqueror in KDE 3.2+, there's a good chance you had a spellchecker when you made your post.:)
Word may have a better spell-checker than OO.o (not that I believe it), but IE does *not* have a spell-checker that can even come close to Konqueror's. Um, the same spell-checker used by KMail. Come to think of it, isn't it the same spell-checker used by OO.o? Aspell?
The electoral college isn't the only solution to this problem, it's just the one we have. We can solve the problem in other ways.
Take as an example a voting method that involves ranking the candidates. So each states uses this voting method to aggregate an entire rank of candidates, and then each state gets to cast a vote based on this rank. You could do away with the electoral college completely and still ensure that states get a say as a group, and the minorities in the group get their say. Under this system, let's say the person in your state that made the 4th rank places second in two other states. Now the chances have gone up that he will get elected, and there are (in three states, at least) a significant amount of people that would accept him as president. Under our current system, he's toast.
As long as you filter the votes at the state level before passing them on, you've solved the problem the electoral college solves. How you do it is another issue as well. The simple fact is, under the electoral college there are a number of states that have marginal influence on the election, because even when added together they still represent less than the required number of electoral votes needed. That's why New Mexico is never a battleground state. It just doesn't matter, they're only three votes. Texas, on the other hand, would be a battleground state (except it usually votes republican).
I like the fact that the electoral college means the president has to lie to most states instead of just lying in CA and NY, but the electoral college isn't the only way to solve thsi problem. IN any case, the Electorate can certainly use better reports than they're getting. I mean, right now they get 40% like Bush, 39% like Kerry, 10% like Nader, etc. How about if they got , instead, 40% like Bush, most of them like Kerry too. 39% like Kerry, but most of them hate Bush. Choosing Kerry would make 86% of your voters happy, whereas choosing Bush would only satisfy 40% of your voters. Under our current system, Bush wins because 40 Voting is all about reporting, and we need to first understand that our current system of voting does not provide enough information to make the best possible decision on how to best represent the people. Then we can work on solving that problem. When it's solved, then we can see if the electoral college itself is broken, or if it works fine when you put the right reports into the hands of the electors.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh boy, I'll bite.
In fact, the states have the power to disolve the federal government, the federal government has no such reciprical power over the state governments.
As much as our Constitution was designed around States' rights, that all went out in 1865. Sorry.
The thing is, you're both right. The original purpose of the Constitution and States' Rights was that the federal government located off in the middle of butt-fucking Egypt doesn't know enough about any specific area to govern it properly. This was something they learned about the King of England trying to rule America like it was downtown London, which it wasn't. The rules needed to be different, but the English crown wouldn't let them. This hasn't changed for America, in each state the rules need to be different. Montana and Alaska, for example, are very large states that are sparsely populated. Does it make sense, then, that to travel from one town to another in either of those states you should be limited to 60 mph? OTOH, it makes perfect sense (to many, at least) to limit speed limits in NY to 60mph because of the combination of weather and traffic congestion. Texas, on the other hand, is large, and it makes sense to have higher speed limits, but is also well-populated. But because of weather conditions, a higher speed limit is more practical. So a central government in Washington DC would tend not to notice and make a single speed limit for the convenience of its citizens, knowing that it may inconvenience the sparsely populated states of Alaska and Montana, and also knowing that that was fine because they don't account for many of the voters anyway.
So State Rights is all about putting as much governing power as possible in the hands of state legislatures so that people can govern themselves locally. That's your point expanded, I think. It is my understanding of hte issue, anyway.
OTOH, the idiot that started this discussion is right to the extent that technological advances have reached a point where it may make sense or even be necessary to take a subset of law and centralize it a bit. Incorporation is a good example, and also a bad example. Some tax laws. How much money is spent that is not taxed just because it was spent over the internet and was interstate? Now that I'm complaining, mind you, but addressing that issue in a Useful fashion would certainly create more revenue for the states, theoretically giving them more money to work for their citizens. There may be other laws, that it would make sense to do this with.
However, the initial concept of states' rights still remains. The federal government in Washington DC is still unqualified to make these sorts of laws for, say, WA, OR, and ID as a group. What would be better, in my opinion, is if the states authorized the creation of a series of midlevel governments who dealt solely with interstate issues, and removed the power to address interstate issues from the federal government completely. That would decentralize the feds at the nominal risk of providing central regional governments.
Blah, I don't really care when you get right down to it. I don't want the feds trampling all over states' rights or individual rights, and our system is already so broke it's gonna take more than replacing a few parts and some minor machining to fix it. I woudl argue it was broke from the get-go.
In any case, States lost most of their rights at the conclusion of the Civil War, because now the Feds have precedent to use force of arms to whip states into obedience. It was good that slavery was finally outlawed, but that was probably the only good thing that came of it.
It's enforced on businesses by a draconian policy of auditing every business regularly. When I had a business in WA, my accountant told me you always pay use tax because they will audit you.
For individuals, the only item I am aware of that they can enforce it on is a car. When you register your car you have to demonstrate that you paid sales tax on it wherever you bought it. If you can't, you pay use tax in WA. You are still required to pay use tax on everything else, but it's difficult to enforce, so there's naturally lots of sales tax revenue the state isn't getting. Expect them to cry RIAA-style about it, it'll happen.
As far as I know, though, WA is the only weird state with that sort of law. I wouldn't be surprised if several other states around Oregon have similar laws, though, just because of Oregon. In all the years I've lived in various states in this country, WA is the only state where I encountered "use tax". So I conclude that the GP (or whoever was talking about use tax) lives in WA, and like all people who live in WA, thinks that the way it is in WA is the way it is everywhere.
Gawd I can't stand that place, I'm so happy I don't lvie there anymore.
6 weeks early and first trimester are completely different things.
You see, your body (well, a woman's body) can and will abort babies on its own from time to time. In the first trimester it's generally ignored, you miss a few periods, have a particularly heavy one, and move on. in the second trimester it depends on the baby, but by then you'r eusually aware you're pregnant and it's considered a miscarriage.
In the third trimester, it's a premature birth and every effort is made to save the baby.
My daughter was 5-7 weeks early (the doctors never managed to agree), and she weighed 6 lbs. She's still huge. ;) Years ago, though, my wife's body rejected a baby a few weeks after it was conceived.
There was a world of difference between the two.
Killing babies, though... man. That's a moral issue, not a religious one. Even the most vocal proponent of "choice," which is just a euphamism for "death," Mrs. Roe is now wishing that she hadn't had an abortion. Not only is it mindless killing, it is also a psychological burden to most would-have-been mothers.
Turning it into a "killing babies" issue is just a smokescreen to get behind the real reason abortion is so threatening. It empowers women. Historically, it has always been possible for a man to walk away form a woman he left pregnant. The simple fact that a woman has a more or less permanent attachment to her baby is exactly what allowed men to enslave women in the first place. Abortion equalizes that biological fact, so that now women and men still need each other to have a baby, but a woman now has the freedom to behave just as irresponsibly towards that baby as the man has.
That has the net result of equalizing women in society and empowering them. Remove it and you open the doors to subjugating women once again and dragging them back into the ages of slavery. Is that what you really want?
Yes, it's wrong to kill babies. It's also wrong to enslave someone purely because of their gender, color, etc. Every baby that dies protects the rights of the mother to behave just as irresopnsibly as men have always had the right to behave. This moves the problem away from the courts of law and into society, where we need to deal with people behaving irresponsibly.
So think of it like this: Women are now telling us "You men start behaving yourselves and take care of your babies or we'll kill them". Historically, what other choice have women had? Don't want someone to get an abortion? Take responsibility for the kid.
After we get these things in line and solve the basic problem, we can take another look at abortion. Also, the Roe v Wade decision does state quite explicitly that Congress can make laws regulating abortion, they just can't ban it. So they can make it safe (for the mother, I mean, obviously it cna't be safe for the baby). So, if you want to ban abortion, you first need to get everyone behaving responsibly. Then you need to get the procedures regulated so they're actually safe. Then, when all that's done, you need to take another look at it. I have a firm conviction that when you reach that ponit, you'll find that abortion as a medical procedure should be kept, becauise the issues you have with it will have been eliminated already.
The bible also says "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". Do you support the death penalty, in that case?
Ever considered that maybe the few commandments that are actually practical have a basis in something that's completely foreign to Christianity, like, oh I don't know, REASON?
Ghandi said "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind" (or something like that). It seems like Ghandi, a definite non-Christian, might have stumbled across the reason behind "Thou shalt not kill".
claim to be Christians and yet espouse anti-welfare, pro-death penalty, or pro-gun positions
I was always under the impression that the Gospel advocated justice, equality, peace, non-violence, respect for one's neighbor, and responsible stewardship of the Earth.
Ever hear of the Colt Peacemaker? Justice and peace come from the barrel of a gun. It's a hard fact of life, but without the freedom to act and the ability to support your words with NUCLEAR POWER, you have no justice, no peace, no equality, no non-violence, no respect, and no responsibility.
All basic "human" concepts derive from this. Jesus is dead not just because it all happened 2000 years ago, but also because he didn't back his words with NUCLEAR POWER. He *could* have lived in freedom, justice, and all that good stuff if he had just thrown a few lightning bolts around to make his point. But no, he didn't, so he's a martyr instead.
* Note the Civ reference is a joke, but isn't intended to make my post a joke
As a Texan, I found that while I didn't agree with exaclty the same caveats you had with Cobb, I liked pretty much everything else he said. In fact, his response to the copyright/patent question was music to my ears.
I'm going to check out Green a bit more seriously now, and they've just moved up a notch in my eyes. I might well wind up casting my vote his way, here in Texas. ;)
I'm not saying I'm for or against GM food, but a candidate for the presidency of the united states could have produced a more intelligent argument aginst it than just calling it "frankenfood"
Yeah, he could've called it "evil-doers" or "draft-dodgers".
The only thing that irritates *me* about calling it Frankenfood is the high likelihood that the person saying it probably thinks Frankenstein was the Creature and doesn't realize the Creature never had a name! Frankenstein was the Creator.
And unfortunately, he didn't GPL his work.
Heh, as a Texan I like telling people we voted for Bush to get him out of Texas, since that was the only way we could get rid of him. :)
While I'll certainly agree that the platforms of the two parties are different, and many of the ideals that underly those platforms are different, the two parties are roughly the same in their capability to run the country, at this time. Which isn't very good. The system that's broke, however, is the uncompetitive system we've got. Or rather, the system is so highly competitive that there can only be two competitors, and that's the problem exactly. Fix that problem so that there will be more competitors in the market, and many of these other problems start to fix themselves. Then in 10 years or so, take another look and readjust.
Not putting serious attention into the Constitution itself and how we can make it better with each generation is the biggest mistake this country has made. I figure 10 new amendments need to be made every 10 years with a complete rewrite every 100 years (rewrite for clarity). That would keep the system up to date. The only problem is that the frequency of changes also significantly increases the possibilities to modify the system in a bad way and seize power.
I'll take the risk, I think. It's that or regular revolution, or falling down into a state of fascism. Pick one of those three, or come up with alternatives that work.
1. Buy an nvidia card if you're after 3d acceleration. The newer ATI cards are supposed to be well supported now (supposedly), and the older ones you can usually get supported with gato (except for my friggin MObility)
Also, thanks to some work by Monty of Xiph, ALSA is supposed to support most/all USB recording devices. This is largely because Monty uses one himself.
2. One word for you, FlightGear.
3. Linux audio is a bit buggy, generally speaking, but there are applications that *do* all of that. What's missing is tight integration, mostly, and in some cases stability. RoseGarden does MIDI (and is pretty unstable). Audacity does multi-track recording and mixing. Ardour does it as well, and some other things. There are several dj-type packages (including a tracker-based dj program), and several drum sequencers, with Hydrogen being the best, generally speaking.
As far as viable alternatives to your favorite applications? Beats me, but I make all my own music in Linux. What I'm lacking in is skill, sound engineering skill (I won't argue musical abilities, I'm happy with mine and always pushing them forward). So my personal bottleneck isn't software, it's personal ability.
Um, actually, flamebait doesn't mean it's a flame, it means that the post intended to attract flames. In other words, flamebait means "You're just trying to piss people off".
While I dont' disagree with you because I know people too well, I am curious how you know for a fact that your posts specifically have been modded down because the mod disagreed with what you wrote. I have noticed posts getting modded down that didn't seem to be obvious trolls or flamebait, and were very much on topic.
In any case, i disagree with a lot of the moderations that go on around here, but I still read at +1 because I just don't have time to sort through all the real trolls and flamebait. One particular caveat I have is 9/11 jokes being modded troll or flamebait or whatever. There's an obvious difference between a joke, a troll, and a flamebait. Sometimes a joke can be flamebait, but you'd really have to personally know the poster to know that the joke is flamebait, many of us post jokes that are intended to be laughed at by people who think it's funny and ignored by people who don't.
Anyway, I need to get some sleep and hope my headache goes away. No more posting because I'll probably get modded as flamebait.
I don't want a computer that dual boots for the same reason I don't want a wife with two personalities.
I actually prefer case sensitivity, but the whitespace thing gets on me nerves. Granted I don't exactly have a solution so I'm willing to live with the problem, but ti still gets on my nerves.
At least the escape method is consistent. And * works for 99% of the situations you have to deal with spaces in filenames in bash.
Tux racer, dude.
Besides, even if Tux smells like fish, that makes him different from a real woman in what way?
Actually, cross-dressing is defined generally as "dressing up like the opposite sex", and a sexual thrill is associated with the act. So a cross-dressing first grade teacher could just be a man wearing frilly panties and growing a few extra boners throughout the day, then going home and banging the shit out of his wife.
There is no association between cross-dressing and homosexuality, although it's likely that there is a higher rate of cross-dressers among homosexuals simply because to live as a homosexual in thsi society you already have to disregard a number of annoying and pointless taboos. So, heterosexuals are less likely to cross-dress because they're too uptight, basically.
There does also appear to be preference to types of clothes that can be linked to gender, but I know of no scientific work actually done on this. Only subjective experience can I offer on that, specifically.
As far as bringing sexual issues to younger children? How else would you arm them against the pedophiles that are out there (statistically speaking, there's one near you)? How else would you prepare them for the confusion of the years when their sexuality will dominate their lives? How else would you arm them against the other kids whose parents have failed miserably to teach them about those same sexual issues?
We've been talking to our kids about sex since before any of them could talk. We talk about what they're capable of understanding at this level, but they've seen things. My older son and my daughter both watched the baby being born. So they saw the kid actually come out of my wife's pussy. They were quite impressed. :) They understand that in the general case a man and a woman are required to put the baby there, and they understand a few other things. None of that "stork" bullshit, and you definitely won't find my kids coming up with "babies come out of their mommies butts, ears, mouths, or whatever". (Maybe the last one will, since he doesn't get to watch a younger sibling get born, but we'll deal with it somehow)
You want healthy sexuality? Treat it like reading and start teaching them what they are capable of learning as soon as they are capable of learning it.
I just wnated to point out that absolute good and absolute evil, as presented in the old testament, can be more readily defined as "You're either with us or against us", where "us" means God.
Think about that for a minute.
God has an annoying PR department, and can only generate FUD for the "other guy". Remove the FUD or the "other guy" and God fizzles.
Heh. The only good Christian is a dead Christian.
naturally, because they all go to heaven. Good riddance!
Can you even imagine how much better Slashdot could be if more people adopted this attitude.
That would require self-confidence, something much of the slashdot crowd lacks in a big way.
Now that I've done my part as Captain Obvious...
Whoah, look up there! What's that? A bird? A plane? A spaceship? Oh, it's a plane.
I suppose I could give a commandline, eh?
mplayer http://64.191.208.150/live/xprize_lo?MSWMExt=.asf
MPlayer grabbed the audio for me, I'm struggling to get video. I don't think I"ll make it, but I had audio until fucking slashdot hit it.
Of course Coral cache is down. The ironing is delicious. ;)
Wow, I've never tasted ironing before. Does it taste like irony?
I was actually thinking about shipping oil and gasoline out there. :) Use bottled oxygen and use IC engines for transportation. That's a sure way to fill up the atmosphere with CO2. Then in selected areas, inject nitrogen into the atmosphere and just grow plants. Do that for awhile and eventually you have an entire planet capable of supporting human life!
(might take awhile, though)
Of course, if you were using Konqueror in KDE 3.2+, there's a good chance you had a spellchecker when you made your post. :)
Word may have a better spell-checker than OO.o (not that I believe it), but IE does *not* have a spell-checker that can even come close to Konqueror's. Um, the same spell-checker used by KMail. Come to think of it, isn't it the same spell-checker used by OO.o? Aspell?
The electoral college isn't the only solution to this problem, it's just the one we have. We can solve the problem in other ways.
Take as an example a voting method that involves ranking the candidates. So each states uses this voting method to aggregate an entire rank of candidates, and then each state gets to cast a vote based on this rank. You could do away with the electoral college completely and still ensure that states get a say as a group, and the minorities in the group get their say. Under this system, let's say the person in your state that made the 4th rank places second in two other states. Now the chances have gone up that he will get elected, and there are (in three states, at least) a significant amount of people that would accept him as president. Under our current system, he's toast.
As long as you filter the votes at the state level before passing them on, you've solved the problem the electoral college solves. How you do it is another issue as well. The simple fact is, under the electoral college there are a number of states that have marginal influence on the election, because even when added together they still represent less than the required number of electoral votes needed. That's why New Mexico is never a battleground state. It just doesn't matter, they're only three votes. Texas, on the other hand, would be a battleground state (except it usually votes republican).
I like the fact that the electoral college means the president has to lie to most states instead of just lying in CA and NY, but the electoral college isn't the only way to solve thsi problem. IN any case, the Electorate can certainly use better reports than they're getting. I mean, right now they get 40% like Bush, 39% like Kerry, 10% like Nader, etc. How about if they got , instead, 40% like Bush, most of them like Kerry too. 39% like Kerry, but most of them hate Bush. Choosing Kerry would make 86% of your voters happy, whereas choosing Bush would only satisfy 40% of your voters. Under our current system, Bush wins because 40 Voting is all about reporting, and we need to first understand that our current system of voting does not provide enough information to make the best possible decision on how to best represent the people. Then we can work on solving that problem. When it's solved, then we can see if the electoral college itself is broken, or if it works fine when you put the right reports into the hands of the electors.
Heh, what I wouldn't give to be able to stand on a stage at the launch and play Born to be Wild. :)
Conversely, I may just have to find a decent stream of the event and play my guitar while watching.