I kinda like the boxelder(ish) bug. Of course, that might be because my apartment's back door is the sunniest one, and it has a boxelder tree nearby, so the visual of a couple hundred black-with-orange-stripes bugs makes a great visual metaphor for my WinXP computer at any given time.
(no, I'm not bashing Microsoft. I freely admit most of the bugs are self-inflicted)
I got 13 (seemingly identical, not that I opened them) e-mails in my Hotmail account from '.NET Messenger Service' telling me about an 'Important Security Update for the.NET Messenger'. All with the little icon that means 'offical communication' or whatever. I think the problem might be more than just needing to update the autoscaning virus software...
Ummmm... They're attaching a propulsion unit to de-orbit it, right? Deorbit is at 0 statute miles, so it kinda has to pass through the neighborhood. If it was reversed, maybe that would be a problem...
Ummmm... Nothing I said can be taken to mean I thought that. In fact, it's quite clear that I knew that because it's the whole basis for the comment.
I'll restate: If a developer chooses to sue SCO for copyright infringement, looking for royalties, my comment points out that SCO cannot say the GPL permits their use of it because in another case, they have declared that the GPL does NOT give the rights stated in the licence (as it is invalid). So, how is it that I said the developer gave up their copyright?
Well, maybe not Linus, but some of the other developers...
Isn't there something... Doctrine of Estopil?... That prohibits you using the reverse of claims in another court case in a case? So if I claim I own the copyright to something and want royalties from the guy who 'stole' it, I can't turn around and say it's not mine when I get sued for libel.
In other words, as long as you don't want to claim damages AFTER the case is decided, you could sue, say 'SCO claims the GPL is invalid, so they have no right to distribute my stuff, I want back royalties' and they literally cannot refute it.
It also ignores one of the other big factors of society... Interaction with places societies, etc. WHy not have a profile of 'Illuminati University', so that everyone who went to 'IOU'* can link to it? It's another way people relate to each other. And from there it's a short step to realize that abstracts are reasonable, as well. Just like saying 'I like Stephen Wright' might help you find people with a similar sense of humor, linking on a site like 'Friendster' to a fake profile that matches your sense of humor or whatever is an excelent way to meet compatible people.
I was interested in joining initially, but this behavior means I'll just ignore it until an iteration that acts more usefully shows up.
Honestly, I'd say 'military' has more ability to kill 'the most people in the least amount of time through incompetence'. That's why there's a lot of redundancy in the military. And in engineering, too.
Mech Eng people don't need to get a PE. We honestly can't kill a lot of people with our stuff (worst that'll happen is someone might break a leg if I screw up a design and one of my instruments falls on someone). Civil Engineers are pretty much required to, for the reasons you mention above.
"Why would I have pictures of something I wasn't interested in?"
That's not strictly relevent to the statement.
(this is going to get touchy, so I'll add the disclaimer up front: Uncomfortable subjects ahead)
You've never been turned on by something you'd never actually do in reality? I hear some of the 'historical romance' novels for women involve forced sex. Women still buy them, and apparently enjoy them. Does that mean they want to be raped? Of course not. Many men have dreams of forcing themselves on women... that doesn't mean that those men are rapists. Just the ones who act upon their fantasy.
The answer would probably be no. The closest thing I could see to it would be the fact that 99% of serial killers/child pornographers/etc. own pornography. Puzzle for the day: Guess the percentage of the general male populous that owns porn? Hint: use cut and paste.
I agree with you that child porn is... screw it, I can go on for paragraphs, and you all know what I mean, anyway... But I think that distribution of already taken photos is wrong, as well. With one big exception, that the US Supreme Court agrees with (from a legal standpoint): 'Faked' images are fine. We don't want kids exploited, and we don't want images of them to come back and haunt them. But images created from scratch or through photoshopping of legal models should be acceptable, and might limit the damages done by people interested in that sort of thing.
That does not negate its obviousness. You (and others, like the Religious Right in particular) choose to ignore it, and refute the plain wording of the Constitution. That's fine. But don't claim that you are not aware of the facts. You are choosing to make a 'moral' (and I'm using that term loosely... attempting to control the lives of others is not moral) decision override the bald statement of fact. Like all moral choices not supported by the facts, facts override them and render them immoral.
Pot: Do a bit of research. It was banned because the illegal immigrants from Mexico were using it for enjoyment, and the white people didn't want them to, and somehow thought it would 'currupt their youth', just like opium was banned because of the Chinese being frowned upon. As for the obviousness, go back and read the 9th and the 10th amendments again. Sure as hell makes it clear that we shouldn't be banning stuff that people want to be happy (that part ('pursuit of happiness', you know) is way up in the preamble... they thought it was important enough to list first).
I don't have to prove it. You have made absolutely no argument, not even a bad one, as to why we should ban pot, porn, etc. Therefore, based on this thread, the government is COMPLETELY constrained from legislating against it. Period. It's been in writing for over 200 years.
"the US government is not obligated to defend the privilege of viewing porn as an inalienable right"
Speaking of pot, what are you smoking? The government does not HAVE TO defend the RIGHT to view porn. It, in fact, has no obligation to do ANYTHING about it. And it is explicitly and VERY VERY CLEARLY PREVENTED from banning it OR supporting it. Read the preamble, 1st, 9th, 10th, and probably 1 or two other amendments that all say so, and remember the right to privacy. The government is not supposed to be an active participant in these discussions. If you don't like porn, then DON'T BUY IT. If enough people agree, there will be no market, and porn goes away. No government involvement, just like the way the country was meant to be run.
Go read this archive. Your trolling has stopped being entertaining, so I'll resort to education.
First point: Not around here. Regardless, so? Don't take your kids into the building. Only go to full-serve stations. Find out which don't sell them, and frequent them, dispite the higher prices. Just like it would be your choice to buy shoes for more money that are not made by virtual slave labor, right?
And Walmart wouldn't choose to add porn to the lineup unless there was sufficient profit to be made over the loss of business that having it would bring.
And smoking sections... So? If non-smokers go out to eat when there isn't a fully non smoking resteraunt to go to, you know what? It's their fault (collectivly) for there not being one. If you don't like a resteraunt because their non-smoking section gets smoky, then actually try to make a differance and don't go. Stop trying to remake the world in your image. Smokers should be able to have someplace to eat, too.
Point 2: Why wouldn't they? I have a right to by The Prince, or even Mein Kamph if I feel like it. Either of those is probably more harmful to society than 10 tons of porn.
Oh, and the reason the Constitution guarentees rights is because the majority should NEVER, and I do mean NEVER, dictate the morals of the minority. That's why the US isn't a pure democracy.
"Why is engaging in what is considered self-destructive behavior an enlargement of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness?"
First, we were talking about porn, not self-destructive behavior. Sounds like you're one of the people who thinks that their beliefs are obviously true and ignore the fact that the majority of people know (not suspect, know) they are not. But we don't ban bungie jumping, delivery food, alchohol (we all saw how that turned out), etc. etc. Self destructive behavior is obviously an inalienable right. Who else has any right whatsoever to tell us what we can do with our lives? Answer: no one. It's our choice, not yours.
The fact is that people should be allowed to make their own choices, and the Constitution was set up to make sure that was possible. Deal with it.
Well, I don't know if you were trying to imply it, but I'm not defensive in that regard. I know I'm above average in IQ, and I really don't think I need to 'prove' it by assisting the stereotype of a group I happen to be a member of. I'm just expressing how I perceive things to be.
Perhaps it's the fact that I'm NOT a programmer, and therefore haven't met as many as you're likely to have met (I'm assuming), but I've found in general that programmers tend toward higher intelligence. Like I said, however, I've had a limited exposure.
As for the science, I find this place to be an excellent way to get access to a repository of 'neat' science stuff. The fact that the reporting is rather pathetic doesn't bother me, because no matter how I manage to get the information, it's liable to be badly distorted. That's journalism for you. But I don't want the full research papers... It's not my field, so it tends to be very hard to read (I hate having to read with 15 different references open, it messes with my train of thought). What I do get is acceptable, as I can make allowances.
Sorry I'm sounding more formal/long winded/whatever now... I'm getting tired and that always makes me sound like I'm trying to write a paper or something.
"Disclaimer: I loathe mensa, and view it as an organization that feeds arrogance and promoting the unimportant."
Agreed.
As for actors vs. Slashdot readers, I don't know... I don't know any of them personally, so I can't exactly tell for sure. I would have assumed that acting is more of a non-IQ-selective vocation. The few interviews I was able to watch seem to show a lack of brightness on many of their parts. (the exceptions are Arnold and Vin Diesel (Vin was on the Daily Show), weirdly enough... I haven't seen a Sharon Stone interview, which somewhat ticks me off as I find smart women more attractive)
Slashdot seems to self-select for trolls (I don't know HOW, I just accept that it is so, as I'm not interested in finding out why) and people who are interested in science and tech, which tends to be brighter people.
And maybe the/. Mensa crowd just doesn't go around talking about it. (thinking back... uh, much, anyway). I certainly wouldn't if I bothered to get a card, as it would seem fairly childish in most cases...
"I really don't think that people here are more intelligent"
Based on my observations, people here are both more and less intelegent than average. i.e. while the average might be the same, the standard deviation is a lot higher (the extremes are more prevelent than the average). I think if you take the top 10% of this place and compare it to the top 10% of the general populous, you'd find a bias toward a higher IQ here because of that.
"How does a state or the government benefit from withholding pornography?"
Control is its own reward. Look at the war on drugs: It's used as a 'we need to violate your rights because of the WoD' crowbar to systematically reduce even the enumerated rights. As people become more accustomed to the gov. wielding this power over them, they become less likely to oppose new slices into freedom.
"They are conflicting privileges."
No, they are not. A person who does not wish to see pornography can go to places (like Wal-Mart) where they do not display it. Making it illegal for ANYONE to get IS a violation of basic human RIGHTS. And read the above thread again, you missed the point about them being rights, not privileges. That's an important and well documented point. I suggest you read the archives here for starters.
And don't get me started on speed limits. The only reason speed limits CAN exist is because the government owns the road and essentially 'rents' it to us. If they were properly owned by private groups like they were for years after the country was founded, then the speed limit would be dependant on the private whim of the owner. Or do you think a cop can pull onto a racetrack and pull over an F1 for reckless driving?
An incandescent, according to the chart, dissipates at least 32.5 lumens/watt more than a flourscent (we'll call that zero heat, for ease). Optimum is 668 lumens/watt. So you're generating about 95% waste heat. There has to be other losses, so say 80% is waste heat. A good toaster oven is 1500 watt. So 18.75 100 watt light bulbs is the same heat... That could add up fast.
I wonder what that does to skew global warming figures... Maybe it's all that's keeping us from an ice age...
No, any right not given to the Fed is given to the people through the 14th amendment.
Amendment XIV: Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Sorry, I assumed you would have read any of the half dozen comments that mentioned it already. This amendment says, when you get down to it, that you can take the 'rights' bit of the constitution, change 'Federal Government' to 'State Government' and it'll still be the law of the land. The State can not have more rights within its own borders than the Fed has within ITS borders.
""Crimes against Morality" are not the worst things to be dealing with. What about the "war" on drugs?"
The 'War on (some) Drugs' IS about 'Crimes against Morality'. Go back to the last round of actually constitutionally approved prohibition, and see the arguments raised there for that amendment. And look at the arguments for expanding the WoD... It's all about some people's (to quote) 'Fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun'.
The government has no business defining morals. All we'll get is people trying to make everyone conform to their definition of 'Real American'
Fred Saberhagan has a good point... When his alien race's government created a device to determine what was the 'true race', committees got involved, religious people got involved, and a definition of appropriate morality was programmed into the machine. And what popped out of that equation? The Berserkers.
"It stands, therefore, not as a right, but rather as a privilege awarded by the majority."
Bull. 10 seconds with google would have given you this tidbit:
Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
How clear can you get? Any right not explicitly given to the government is EXPLICITLY given to the people. People like you have constantly ignored these two amendments, and in the process, slashed away at the rights given to us by our existence. Not by the government, inherent rights.
If a woman wants to express herself by getting nude and getting paid for it, it's her call, and no one else's, except in that we don't have to buy a copy of 'Janet Reno, nude!' if we don't want to.
Oh, regarding: "The decision falls to the majority. Will more people be unhappy with it than happy? Then it won't be allowed."
In case you hadn't noticed, the majority of people do not need to be protected by the majority. The Constitution is set up to make sure that minorities cannot be repressed by the Fed (and the States). A white (non-Yankee) male does not have to be protected to get a job as sheriff in the deep south. A black woman just might. The Constitution protects against the 'Tyranny of the Majority'.
"ignores the fact that copyright law has evolved...because that is what producers believe they require to turn a profit"
You have made a subtle, but important, error there. Not 'to turn a profit', but 'to maximize their profits'. They had no problem turning a profit beforehand, they just wanted more, more, more.
They have no sense of belonging to a society, all they want is to grab as much cash as they can. When they do act like they're part of the world as a whole, you can generally see it as a obvious way to get publicity to boost profits, too...
Yeah, that was always the showstopper for me. I NEED the brackets if I'm doing anything even moderately complex. Way, way more efficient to look back, realize 'hey, that's going to compute out of order' and insert parens around the section to be sure. Plus, as was mentioned, the ability to make sure you don't lose your place, etc.
It might be that I'm a mechanical engineer... I knew a couple people who had HPs when they started college and switched to the TI-85 type because it fit in more with what we needed to do. Where I work now, we have about 30, 40 MEs and I think 2 use HPs (and I mean the old one line display HPs, not a graphing). Everyone else has a 85 or an 89 (except for one guy who uses a 92...)
Anything too complex for the TI to handle gets dumped into Mathcad or Excel, depending on exactly what needs to be done.
The only other complaint I've seen is about a non-1:1 aspect ratio to screen for graphic. Makes graphing circles weird (they look more oval). Otherwise, I used to be able to do calculations on my old TI-85 faster than the RPN people. All in what you're used to.
Well, what I found in the article is fairly short (maybe there's more under a different heading, but I just couldn't read the whole thing). But I would think that if it were approached differently than as a flow chart, it might be useful.
For example, you'd want it to be OO. You can make each object easy enough on a separate page. Define an 'interface', inheritance, etc. as 'plug-in' shapes. For example, maybe a triangle... Then it could plug into whatever uses it. If you need to use an interface, tell it to, and the 'shape' of the object changes to give you a place to plug in the other object. If you need to create that object, then color it the same way, so color would be a 'created by/creator of' indicator (perhaps darker shades being higher in the 'chain'...). A third indicator could be border type...
The global variables you would need to plug in would be 'held' in an independent object, and connected to objects that need to use them. But if you 'focus' on the global object, you could see where the data is used (and if you use arrows, you could tell where it is modified as well... point the head at the object if it receives the data but doesn't update it, and at the global object if the other one does update the value)
Sure, it wouldn't be useful for anything beyond low-middle complexity programs, but it would make simple programs easier for low level coders (like me, I'll admit... I could use someone teaching me how to use Python or something (I've got basic knowledge of BASIC, Pascal, FORTRAN, and rudimentary C)). And I THINK it might be able to be used as a code browser for any OO program... I sort of 'designed' it in a way that it would work for Java. So you could see the real code for it, even if you used the graphical interface to build it.
I was thinking about the idea based on the graphical web browsing things that have been popping up. Click on a node, and the focus shifts to what connects directly to that node with the stuff connected to those 'fading out' into the distance, etc.
I think it's doable, but I'm not sure it would be useful to serious coders except for certain specific types of debugging. On the other hand, the world isn't made up of all serious coders...
"Every time you load software into the processor of the computer, you're making a copy," Radcliffe said. "It's kind of a point of dispute"
I stopped reading at that point. The lawyer is a moron. Every time you read a book, the light reflects off it, making a copy. I doubt THAT would cause a point of dispute.
And both types of copy are needed before use of the work under copy right becomes useful, so the analogy works.
Slashdot Mirror
(no, I'm not bashing Microsoft. I freely admit most of the bugs are self-inflicted)
I got 13 (seemingly identical, not that I opened them) e-mails in my Hotmail account from '.NET Messenger Service' telling me about an 'Important Security Update for the .NET Messenger'. All with the little icon that means 'offical communication' or whatever. I think the problem might be more than just needing to update the autoscaning virus software...
Ummmm... They're attaching a propulsion unit to de-orbit it, right? Deorbit is at 0 statute miles, so it kinda has to pass through the neighborhood. If it was reversed, maybe that would be a problem...
I'll restate: If a developer chooses to sue SCO for copyright infringement, looking for royalties, my comment points out that SCO cannot say the GPL permits their use of it because in another case, they have declared that the GPL does NOT give the rights stated in the licence (as it is invalid). So, how is it that I said the developer gave up their copyright?
Isn't there something... Doctrine of Estopil?... That prohibits you using the reverse of claims in another court case in a case? So if I claim I own the copyright to something and want royalties from the guy who 'stole' it, I can't turn around and say it's not mine when I get sued for libel.
In other words, as long as you don't want to claim damages AFTER the case is decided, you could sue, say 'SCO claims the GPL is invalid, so they have no right to distribute my stuff, I want back royalties' and they literally cannot refute it.
I was interested in joining initially, but this behavior means I'll just ignore it until an iteration that acts more usefully shows up.
Honestly, I'd say 'military' has more ability to kill 'the most people in the least amount of time through incompetence'. That's why there's a lot of redundancy in the military. And in engineering, too.
Mech Eng people don't need to get a PE. We honestly can't kill a lot of people with our stuff (worst that'll happen is someone might break a leg if I screw up a design and one of my instruments falls on someone). Civil Engineers are pretty much required to, for the reasons you mention above.
That's not strictly relevent to the statement.
(this is going to get touchy, so I'll add the disclaimer up front: Uncomfortable subjects ahead)
You've never been turned on by something you'd never actually do in reality? I hear some of the 'historical romance' novels for women involve forced sex. Women still buy them, and apparently enjoy them. Does that mean they want to be raped? Of course not. Many men have dreams of forcing themselves on women... that doesn't mean that those men are rapists. Just the ones who act upon their fantasy.
The answer would probably be no. The closest thing I could see to it would be the fact that 99% of serial killers/child pornographers/etc. own pornography. Puzzle for the day: Guess the percentage of the general male populous that owns porn? Hint: use cut and paste.
I agree with you that child porn is... screw it, I can go on for paragraphs, and you all know what I mean, anyway... But I think that distribution of already taken photos is wrong, as well. With one big exception, that the US Supreme Court agrees with (from a legal standpoint): 'Faked' images are fine. We don't want kids exploited, and we don't want images of them to come back and haunt them. But images created from scratch or through photoshopping of legal models should be acceptable, and might limit the damages done by people interested in that sort of thing.
That does not negate its obviousness. You (and others, like the Religious Right in particular) choose to ignore it, and refute the plain wording of the Constitution. That's fine. But don't claim that you are not aware of the facts. You are choosing to make a 'moral' (and I'm using that term loosely... attempting to control the lives of others is not moral) decision override the bald statement of fact. Like all moral choices not supported by the facts, facts override them and render them immoral.
Pot: Do a bit of research. It was banned because the illegal immigrants from Mexico were using it for enjoyment, and the white people didn't want them to, and somehow thought it would 'currupt their youth', just like opium was banned because of the Chinese being frowned upon. As for the obviousness, go back and read the 9th and the 10th amendments again. Sure as hell makes it clear that we shouldn't be banning stuff that people want to be happy (that part ('pursuit of happiness', you know) is way up in the preamble... they thought it was important enough to list first).
I don't have to prove it. You have made absolutely no argument, not even a bad one, as to why we should ban pot, porn, etc. Therefore, based on this thread, the government is COMPLETELY constrained from legislating against it. Period. It's been in writing for over 200 years.
"the US government is not obligated to defend the privilege of viewing porn as an inalienable right"
Speaking of pot, what are you smoking? The government does not HAVE TO defend the RIGHT to view porn. It, in fact, has no obligation to do ANYTHING about it. And it is explicitly and VERY VERY CLEARLY PREVENTED from banning it OR supporting it. Read the preamble, 1st, 9th, 10th, and probably 1 or two other amendments that all say so, and remember the right to privacy. The government is not supposed to be an active participant in these discussions. If you don't like porn, then DON'T BUY IT. If enough people agree, there will be no market, and porn goes away. No government involvement, just like the way the country was meant to be run.
Go read this archive. Your trolling has stopped being entertaining, so I'll resort to education.
And Walmart wouldn't choose to add porn to the lineup unless there was sufficient profit to be made over the loss of business that having it would bring.
And smoking sections... So? If non-smokers go out to eat when there isn't a fully non smoking resteraunt to go to, you know what? It's their fault (collectivly) for there not being one. If you don't like a resteraunt because their non-smoking section gets smoky, then actually try to make a differance and don't go. Stop trying to remake the world in your image. Smokers should be able to have someplace to eat, too.
Point 2: Why wouldn't they? I have a right to by The Prince, or even Mein Kamph if I feel like it. Either of those is probably more harmful to society than 10 tons of porn.
Oh, and the reason the Constitution guarentees rights is because the majority should NEVER, and I do mean NEVER, dictate the morals of the minority. That's why the US isn't a pure democracy.
"Why is engaging in what is considered self-destructive behavior an enlargement of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness?"
First, we were talking about porn, not self-destructive behavior. Sounds like you're one of the people who thinks that their beliefs are obviously true and ignore the fact that the majority of people know (not suspect, know) they are not. But we don't ban bungie jumping, delivery food, alchohol (we all saw how that turned out), etc. etc. Self destructive behavior is obviously an inalienable right. Who else has any right whatsoever to tell us what we can do with our lives? Answer: no one. It's our choice, not yours.
The fact is that people should be allowed to make their own choices, and the Constitution was set up to make sure that was possible. Deal with it.
Perhaps it's the fact that I'm NOT a programmer, and therefore haven't met as many as you're likely to have met (I'm assuming), but I've found in general that programmers tend toward higher intelligence. Like I said, however, I've had a limited exposure.
As for the science, I find this place to be an excellent way to get access to a repository of 'neat' science stuff. The fact that the reporting is rather pathetic doesn't bother me, because no matter how I manage to get the information, it's liable to be badly distorted. That's journalism for you. But I don't want the full research papers... It's not my field, so it tends to be very hard to read (I hate having to read with 15 different references open, it messes with my train of thought). What I do get is acceptable, as I can make allowances.
Sorry I'm sounding more formal/long winded/whatever now... I'm getting tired and that always makes me sound like I'm trying to write a paper or something.
Agreed.
As for actors vs. Slashdot readers, I don't know... I don't know any of them personally, so I can't exactly tell for sure. I would have assumed that acting is more of a non-IQ-selective vocation. The few interviews I was able to watch seem to show a lack of brightness on many of their parts. (the exceptions are Arnold and Vin Diesel (Vin was on the Daily Show), weirdly enough... I haven't seen a Sharon Stone interview, which somewhat ticks me off as I find smart women more attractive)
Slashdot seems to self-select for trolls (I don't know HOW, I just accept that it is so, as I'm not interested in finding out why) and people who are interested in science and tech, which tends to be brighter people.
And maybe the /. Mensa crowd just doesn't go around talking about it. (thinking back... uh, much, anyway). I certainly wouldn't if I bothered to get a card, as it would seem fairly childish in most cases...
Based on my observations, people here are both more and less intelegent than average. i.e. while the average might be the same, the standard deviation is a lot higher (the extremes are more prevelent than the average). I think if you take the top 10% of this place and compare it to the top 10% of the general populous, you'd find a bias toward a higher IQ here because of that.
Control is its own reward. Look at the war on drugs: It's used as a 'we need to violate your rights because of the WoD' crowbar to systematically reduce even the enumerated rights. As people become more accustomed to the gov. wielding this power over them, they become less likely to oppose new slices into freedom.
"They are conflicting privileges."
No, they are not. A person who does not wish to see pornography can go to places (like Wal-Mart) where they do not display it. Making it illegal for ANYONE to get IS a violation of basic human RIGHTS. And read the above thread again, you missed the point about them being rights, not privileges. That's an important and well documented point. I suggest you read the archives here for starters.
And don't get me started on speed limits. The only reason speed limits CAN exist is because the government owns the road and essentially 'rents' it to us. If they were properly owned by private groups like they were for years after the country was founded, then the speed limit would be dependant on the private whim of the owner. Or do you think a cop can pull onto a racetrack and pull over an F1 for reckless driving?
An incandescent, according to the chart, dissipates at least 32.5 lumens/watt more than a flourscent (we'll call that zero heat, for ease). Optimum is 668 lumens/watt. So you're generating about 95% waste heat. There has to be other losses, so say 80% is waste heat. A good toaster oven is 1500 watt. So 18.75 100 watt light bulbs is the same heat... That could add up fast.
I wonder what that does to skew global warming figures... Maybe it's all that's keeping us from an ice age...
Amendment XIV: Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Sorry, I assumed you would have read any of the half dozen comments that mentioned it already. This amendment says, when you get down to it, that you can take the 'rights' bit of the constitution, change 'Federal Government' to 'State Government' and it'll still be the law of the land. The State can not have more rights within its own borders than the Fed has within ITS borders.
The 'War on (some) Drugs' IS about 'Crimes against Morality'. Go back to the last round of actually constitutionally approved prohibition, and see the arguments raised there for that amendment. And look at the arguments for expanding the WoD... It's all about some people's (to quote) 'Fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun'.
The government has no business defining morals. All we'll get is people trying to make everyone conform to their definition of 'Real American'
Fred Saberhagan has a good point... When his alien race's government created a device to determine what was the 'true race', committees got involved, religious people got involved, and a definition of appropriate morality was programmed into the machine. And what popped out of that equation? The Berserkers.
Bull. 10 seconds with google would have given you this tidbit:
Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
How clear can you get? Any right not explicitly given to the government is EXPLICITLY given to the people. People like you have constantly ignored these two amendments, and in the process, slashed away at the rights given to us by our existence. Not by the government, inherent rights.
If a woman wants to express herself by getting nude and getting paid for it, it's her call, and no one else's, except in that we don't have to buy a copy of 'Janet Reno, nude!' if we don't want to.
Oh, regarding: "The decision falls to the majority. Will more people be unhappy with it than happy? Then it won't be allowed."
In case you hadn't noticed, the majority of people do not need to be protected by the majority. The Constitution is set up to make sure that minorities cannot be repressed by the Fed (and the States). A white (non-Yankee) male does not have to be protected to get a job as sheriff in the deep south. A black woman just might. The Constitution protects against the 'Tyranny of the Majority'.
Good thing it doesn't have to...
"performed by over 100 developers in a former Soviet Republic"
You have made a subtle, but important, error there. Not 'to turn a profit', but 'to maximize their profits'. They had no problem turning a profit beforehand, they just wanted more, more, more.
They have no sense of belonging to a society, all they want is to grab as much cash as they can. When they do act like they're part of the world as a whole, you can generally see it as a obvious way to get publicity to boost profits, too...
Yeah, that was always the showstopper for me. I NEED the brackets if I'm doing anything even moderately complex. Way, way more efficient to look back, realize 'hey, that's going to compute out of order' and insert parens around the section to be sure. Plus, as was mentioned, the ability to make sure you don't lose your place, etc.
It might be that I'm a mechanical engineer... I knew a couple people who had HPs when they started college and switched to the TI-85 type because it fit in more with what we needed to do. Where I work now, we have about 30, 40 MEs and I think 2 use HPs (and I mean the old one line display HPs, not a graphing). Everyone else has a 85 or an 89 (except for one guy who uses a 92...)
Anything too complex for the TI to handle gets dumped into Mathcad or Excel, depending on exactly what needs to be done.
The only other complaint I've seen is about a non-1:1 aspect ratio to screen for graphic. Makes graphing circles weird (they look more oval). Otherwise, I used to be able to do calculations on my old TI-85 faster than the RPN people. All in what you're used to.
For example, you'd want it to be OO. You can make each object easy enough on a separate page. Define an 'interface', inheritance, etc. as 'plug-in' shapes. For example, maybe a triangle... Then it could plug into whatever uses it. If you need to use an interface, tell it to, and the 'shape' of the object changes to give you a place to plug in the other object. If you need to create that object, then color it the same way, so color would be a 'created by/creator of' indicator (perhaps darker shades being higher in the 'chain'...). A third indicator could be border type...
The global variables you would need to plug in would be 'held' in an independent object, and connected to objects that need to use them. But if you 'focus' on the global object, you could see where the data is used (and if you use arrows, you could tell where it is modified as well... point the head at the object if it receives the data but doesn't update it, and at the global object if the other one does update the value)
Sure, it wouldn't be useful for anything beyond low-middle complexity programs, but it would make simple programs easier for low level coders (like me, I'll admit... I could use someone teaching me how to use Python or something (I've got basic knowledge of BASIC, Pascal, FORTRAN, and rudimentary C)). And I THINK it might be able to be used as a code browser for any OO program... I sort of 'designed' it in a way that it would work for Java. So you could see the real code for it, even if you used the graphical interface to build it.
I was thinking about the idea based on the graphical web browsing things that have been popping up. Click on a node, and the focus shifts to what connects directly to that node with the stuff connected to those 'fading out' into the distance, etc.
I think it's doable, but I'm not sure it would be useful to serious coders except for certain specific types of debugging. On the other hand, the world isn't made up of all serious coders...
I stopped reading at that point. The lawyer is a moron. Every time you read a book, the light reflects off it, making a copy. I doubt THAT would cause a point of dispute.
And both types of copy are needed before use of the work under copy right becomes useful, so the analogy works.