The Europeans might be pressuring Google to reduce its retention periods, but I suspect that Google heard the opposite point-of-view from the government here in the USA.
I also suspect they heard the opposite view in Ireland. It's fun to make flippant statements isn't it? Check out the actual news from Europe and you may find that the grass isn't greener over there.
I hope you don't base your life on that statement. More studies are starting to come out that public transportation in the US actually creates more pollution than if the people who used it drove. You need a critical mass to get a benefit, and when you don't get it, people like you who ride public transportation are just prolonging something that's doing more harm than good (pollution-wise).
It's definitely amusing. The ticket for "change" is the ticket with two current US Senators. No governors, no mayors, not even congressmen, but the ivory tower of the Senate.
Current polls show the Democrat congress' approval rating hanging around 22%. That's right, lower than the President's meager approval of 28-30%. The Obama campaign may want to check its confidence of victory at the door. Picking Biden from the 22% barrel may not be the wisest decision.
If you do not pay taxes, but you consume government provided resources, then the government is taking from one group to support you.
Ergo, tax breaks (which is what we are talking about here, not actual cuts) are welfare.
10 bucks says people will mod you up because you used the word "ergo". But your conclusion doesn't actually follow from your premise in this case. Microsoft is not consuming government resources tax-free, they're still paying to move there, paying to build their buildings, etc. An incentive of lower taxes does not equate with free government resources. Ergo, your conclusion is false.
Cloudy days still let current solar cells work at about 25% efficiency, and the thousands of square feet of roof your home or apartment building has can generate a surprising amount of energy, provided you're not wasting anything.
You should read a little more into it. There's a reason solar is mostly prevelant in the west and southwest. Even in Florida, the Sunshine State, there is very little solar buildup because there isn't enough constant sun. Many studies show current solar technology isn't near ready for deployment outside the southwest. I'd look the studies up again for you... but well, I'm just too tired right now.
Centrist in world politicians, but leftist in world politicians during the 1920's. Your turn. (i.e. who cares? because the world in its current state makes the perfect average and the center is the perfect moral and political stance?)
by providing subsidies to the cable and telecom monopolies
Not quite. What McCain proposes is tax cuts to these areas to spur development. Lessig, of course, calls them subsidies. A subsidy is very different from a tax cut. Of course, one shouldn't be surprised that Lessig makes this confusion as his political leanings tend to assume that tax money originates and belongs to the government, not the originating source of the income. The word subsidy also makes it sound like McCain wants to fill evil telecoms' pockets with undeserved cash.
If you don't see the distinction... imagine calling a decrease in your personal income tax a subsidy:)
It sounds like you've been drinking the obama kool-aid.
Why are you and others even talking about automobiles so much? That's the smaller piece of the carbon pie. The larger, much bigger piece is electricity production. Electricity production makes up 40% of US CO2. Autos are 25%.
Stop playing in the kiddie pool, and hop on board the real problem and find the real solutions that make a real difference. There's an answer that's been here for decades, nuclear power. Get on board. Obama is against it, McCain is for it. Ask why Obama wants to fund ethanol research and not nuclear development... and vote McCain. You can dream about other alternative fuels that have the nasty side effects of raising food prices for the world's impoverished, or you can get a clean solution now.
or risk their future, and their potential baby's, trying to raise a child they're not prepared to support
I love how you argue that a reason to abort the baby is because the baby's "future" would be risky if he/she was born. Abort the baby's future... because his future might be risky. If you don't see the absolute irony, conflict, and (IMHO) grotesque error in your arguments, so help you!
Huh? It took me a while to understand what you wrote too. Me thinks you shouldn't try to read so deeply into these things. Not everyone is trying to personally attack you.
I think the government should be in the business of increasing personal freedom...and that is why I would see both restrictions on abortion, and a reduction in support for Planned Parenthood as bad things.
I've heard this argument many times. The error in your logic lies in assuming that the fetus has no rights to personal freedom. By giving more "freedom" to the mother, you take away any freedom the baby has and would ever have. I'm sure you disagree with me here, but that's just the point. The debate is a moral one, not a freedom one. The core question is the moral status of the fetus. All other arguments fall from it.
You obviously believe the fetus has no moral standing, and so abortion laws limit the mother's freedom and nobody else's. Your opponents see you limiting the fetus' freedom. For the same reason we have laws against stealing and murder... I'm sure you don't argue that stealing is ok. After all, prohibitions on stealing takes away my personal freedom of being able to take whatever I want.
It comes down to a moral question regardless of how much you try to ignore it.
I think you're misusing the word intelligent. All of your arguments against reality TV are based on issues of time usage, morals, and social interactions (morals again). Intelligence has little to do with these things. Intelligent people can be sexual deviants. Intelligent people can be extremely lazy (join grad school to find out). Intelligent people can be gossips (join academia to find out). None of these are in conflict, although you seem to think so.
Your real stance seems to be that reality tv represents moral decay in society. Or perhaps you're coming from an economic wastefulness standpoint. I don't necessarily disagree. But either way, it has very little to do with intelligence.
But once you get through the "stupid security", you can travel through 50 states. Last I checked, 50 is alot more than a dozen.
I don't know why europeans always forget how big the US is, as if the borders between european countries are somehow much more important than a border between two US states. So you can travel from Italy to Germany without a security check. Wow amazing. I can travel from California to Maine without a security check, and last I checked, that's THREE times the distance.
All this means is that the States have managed to make nice with its stately neighbors, and Europe is only just getting around to it 200+ years after the USA did.
10 bucks says you're Chinese:)
Your argument is perverted. If it was true, then why doesn't the news make up news stories? They could create some CGI of someone robbing a bank. After all, the fake video of the robbery is "a series of impressive images on your screen." We watch the olympics ceremony on TV because we can't be there in person. It is knowing that this amazing performance is happening across the world that makes us watch. It is knowing that real people and real visuals are occurring that makes it fascinating.
I'd add a random amount of noise to the computer program to move the blocks... you'd get the same effect of the movements being very coordinated, but slightly off.
Umm, the u.s. tourism sector did recover. Now that the dollar is so low against the euro, european tourism is way up. Don't use the word "never", and check your facts.
So who are you going to vote for? Or just stay home?
I'm always curious about people who say they would have voted for McCain, but then claim he has disappointed them. I mean, where is the disappointment? 4 months of campaigning? Short sound bites of his arguments? If you get disappointed that easily, I think you just must never pay attention to politics. He has decades of a voting record that is to the left of almost all republicans when you talk about actual contentious issues. If you really are a registered republican, then you must be voting 3rd party and certainly not Obama.
I'm just going to assume that you heard that based on something a friend or family member told you. Because honestly, you're just flat out incorrect. If you would just take 10 minutes out of your day and look some stuff up, you'll find you're wrong. It is extremely difficult to find historians who don't recognize a historical Jesus existed.
You can hate religion, Christianity, whatever... but it does you no good to make blatantly false statements.
Hahaha Dennis Kucinich... he must be having campaign withdrawal. Nobody is giving him enough attention anymore. Of course, nobody paid attention to him when he was running for president either.
Most of the time if someone is greedy and they need public support for themselves all the need to do is claim this is a political issue and generally poor conservatives will support them.
Yeah because only conservatives fall for that stuff. Yeesh. Ad hominem. Reading that post was almost as good as someone complaining about poor grammar and making a grammar mistake in their own sentence.
has become a blanket insult in the USA for anyone and anything who's not for giving more money and unchecked power to the corporations and billionaires
That's where your little hidden assumption lives. We're not giving money to corporations. The money was already there in the first place. If you take someone's money and then decide to give it back later... that's not giving them "more money", it's returning the money that was his/her's in the first place.
Maybe I'll rob you on the street today, and then tomorrow I'll visit you and "give you more money" back.
It's backwards. It's always backwards. If you want to be a socialist, that's fine, but be upfront about what you're actually proposing. You're proposing TAKING people's money and redistributing it based on some principle.
"the republican party is headed for serious trouble if they don't win the next presidential election, which there is every indication that they will not?"
Oh you must be referring to Bush's 28% approval rating. Of course, Congress' approval rating is even lower at 16%. Which party runs Congress now?
Maybe you're referring to Obama's overwhelming popularity. Of course, he just lost 8 of the last 15 primary states, including the big ones of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Or maybe you're referring to Independent voters supporting Obama. Of course, those numbers have dropped the past two months to be even with McCain.
I know what you must mean, the racial unity of everyone voting for him. Of course, 90+% of blacks voted for Obama, and more whites voted for Clinton. It's shocking to see the same racial divide among democrats that democrats accuse republicans of having. Maybe they'll stop taking the black vote for granted now. Probably not.
Every indication? Take a second look beyond the media headlines.
This area of research has been growing more popular lately. Last year's big language conference had a keynote speaker address the question of brain waves and word recognition. Most of the progress though is based on nouns because they have a core rooted meaning in everyone's head...you basically visualize a generic version of that object in the world. You say hammer, I think of an actual hammer I've seen. It's not really mind reading because the approach falls apart when you start talking about verbs and actions...which are what most conversations and thoughts are about. Actions don't have a stereotypical physical representation in the world, but rather involve several objects with that action, all interacting in some way that defines it. As I understand it, the patterns they observe in the brain then become too complex to capture.
Is it just me, or do those robots look entirely too fragile? Worse yet, the treads appear to be about a hand's width in length. There's no way something like that will be useful out in the wild. It'll come across a 5 inch ridge in the ice and be blocked!
Slashdot Mirror
The Europeans might be pressuring Google to reduce its retention periods, but I suspect that Google heard the opposite point-of-view from the government here in the USA.
I also suspect they heard the opposite view in Ireland. It's fun to make flippant statements isn't it? Check out the actual news from Europe and you may find that the grass isn't greener over there.
I hope you don't base your life on that statement. More studies are starting to come out that public transportation in the US actually creates more pollution than if the people who used it drove. You need a critical mass to get a benefit, and when you don't get it, people like you who ride public transportation are just prolonging something that's doing more harm than good (pollution-wise).
It's definitely amusing. The ticket for "change" is the ticket with two current US Senators. No governors, no mayors, not even congressmen, but the ivory tower of the Senate.
Current polls show the Democrat congress' approval rating hanging around 22%. That's right, lower than the President's meager approval of 28-30%. The Obama campaign may want to check its confidence of victory at the door. Picking Biden from the 22% barrel may not be the wisest decision.
If you do not pay taxes, but you consume government provided resources, then the government is taking from one group to support you. Ergo, tax breaks (which is what we are talking about here, not actual cuts) are welfare.
10 bucks says people will mod you up because you used the word "ergo". But your conclusion doesn't actually follow from your premise in this case. Microsoft is not consuming government resources tax-free, they're still paying to move there, paying to build their buildings, etc. An incentive of lower taxes does not equate with free government resources. Ergo, your conclusion is false.
Cloudy days still let current solar cells work at about 25% efficiency, and the thousands of square feet of roof your home or apartment building has can generate a surprising amount of energy, provided you're not wasting anything.
You should read a little more into it. There's a reason solar is mostly prevelant in the west and southwest. Even in Florida, the Sunshine State, there is very little solar buildup because there isn't enough constant sun. Many studies show current solar technology isn't near ready for deployment outside the southwest. I'd look the studies up again for you ... but well, I'm just too tired right now.
Centrist in world politicians, but leftist in world politicians during the 1920's. Your turn. (i.e. who cares? because the world in its current state makes the perfect average and the center is the perfect moral and political stance?)
by providing subsidies to the cable and telecom monopolies
Not quite. What McCain proposes is tax cuts to these areas to spur development. Lessig, of course, calls them subsidies. A subsidy is very different from a tax cut. Of course, one shouldn't be surprised that Lessig makes this confusion as his political leanings tend to assume that tax money originates and belongs to the government, not the originating source of the income. The word subsidy also makes it sound like McCain wants to fill evil telecoms' pockets with undeserved cash.
If you don't see the distinction ... imagine calling a decrease in your personal income tax a subsidy :)
It sounds like you've been drinking the obama kool-aid.
Why are you and others even talking about automobiles so much? That's the smaller piece of the carbon pie. The larger, much bigger piece is electricity production. Electricity production makes up 40% of US CO2. Autos are 25%.
Stop playing in the kiddie pool, and hop on board the real problem and find the real solutions that make a real difference. There's an answer that's been here for decades, nuclear power. Get on board. Obama is against it, McCain is for it. Ask why Obama wants to fund ethanol research and not nuclear development ... and vote McCain. You can dream about other alternative fuels that have the nasty side effects of raising food prices for the world's impoverished, or you can get a clean solution now.
or risk their future, and their potential baby's, trying to raise a child they're not prepared to support
I love how you argue that a reason to abort the baby is because the baby's "future" would be risky if he/she was born. Abort the baby's future ... because his future might be risky. If you don't see the absolute irony, conflict, and (IMHO) grotesque error in your arguments, so help you!
Huh? It took me a while to understand what you wrote too. Me thinks you shouldn't try to read so deeply into these things. Not everyone is trying to personally attack you.
I think the government should be in the business of increasing personal freedom...and that is why I would see both restrictions on abortion, and a reduction in support for Planned Parenthood as bad things.
I've heard this argument many times. The error in your logic lies in assuming that the fetus has no rights to personal freedom. By giving more "freedom" to the mother, you take away any freedom the baby has and would ever have. I'm sure you disagree with me here, but that's just the point. The debate is a moral one, not a freedom one. The core question is the moral status of the fetus. All other arguments fall from it.
You obviously believe the fetus has no moral standing, and so abortion laws limit the mother's freedom and nobody else's. Your opponents see you limiting the fetus' freedom. For the same reason we have laws against stealing and murder ... I'm sure you don't argue that stealing is ok. After all, prohibitions on stealing takes away my personal freedom of being able to take whatever I want.
It comes down to a moral question regardless of how much you try to ignore it.
I think you're misusing the word intelligent. All of your arguments against reality TV are based on issues of time usage, morals, and social interactions (morals again). Intelligence has little to do with these things. Intelligent people can be sexual deviants. Intelligent people can be extremely lazy (join grad school to find out). Intelligent people can be gossips (join academia to find out). None of these are in conflict, although you seem to think so.
Your real stance seems to be that reality tv represents moral decay in society. Or perhaps you're coming from an economic wastefulness standpoint. I don't necessarily disagree. But either way, it has very little to do with intelligence.
But once you get through the "stupid security", you can travel through 50 states. Last I checked, 50 is alot more than a dozen.
I don't know why europeans always forget how big the US is, as if the borders between european countries are somehow much more important than a border between two US states. So you can travel from Italy to Germany without a security check. Wow amazing. I can travel from California to Maine without a security check, and last I checked, that's THREE times the distance.
All this means is that the States have managed to make nice with its stately neighbors, and Europe is only just getting around to it 200+ years after the USA did.
10 bucks says you're Chinese :)
Your argument is perverted. If it was true, then why doesn't the news make up news stories? They could create some CGI of someone robbing a bank. After all, the fake video of the robbery is "a series of impressive images on your screen." We watch the olympics ceremony on TV because we can't be there in person. It is knowing that this amazing performance is happening across the world that makes us watch. It is knowing that real people and real visuals are occurring that makes it fascinating.
I'd add a random amount of noise to the computer program to move the blocks ... you'd get the same effect of the movements being very coordinated, but slightly off.
Umm, the u.s. tourism sector did recover. Now that the dollar is so low against the euro, european tourism is way up. Don't use the word "never", and check your facts.
So who are you going to vote for? Or just stay home? I'm always curious about people who say they would have voted for McCain, but then claim he has disappointed them. I mean, where is the disappointment? 4 months of campaigning? Short sound bites of his arguments? If you get disappointed that easily, I think you just must never pay attention to politics. He has decades of a voting record that is to the left of almost all republicans when you talk about actual contentious issues. If you really are a registered republican, then you must be voting 3rd party and certainly not Obama.
I'm just going to assume that you heard that based on something a friend or family member told you. Because honestly, you're just flat out incorrect. If you would just take 10 minutes out of your day and look some stuff up, you'll find you're wrong. It is extremely difficult to find historians who don't recognize a historical Jesus existed. You can hate religion, Christianity, whatever ... but it does you no good to make blatantly false statements.
Hahaha Dennis Kucinich ... he must be having campaign withdrawal. Nobody is giving him enough attention anymore. Of course, nobody paid attention to him when he was running for president either.
Most of the time if someone is greedy and they need public support for themselves all the need to do is claim this is a political issue and generally poor conservatives will support them.
Yeah because only conservatives fall for that stuff. Yeesh. Ad hominem. Reading that post was almost as good as someone complaining about poor grammar and making a grammar mistake in their own sentence.
has become a blanket insult in the USA for anyone and anything who's not for giving more money and unchecked power to the corporations and billionaires
That's where your little hidden assumption lives. We're not giving money to corporations. The money was already there in the first place. If you take someone's money and then decide to give it back later ... that's not giving them "more money", it's returning the money that was his/her's in the first place.
Maybe I'll rob you on the street today, and then tomorrow I'll visit you and "give you more money" back.
It's backwards. It's always backwards. If you want to be a socialist, that's fine, but be upfront about what you're actually proposing. You're proposing TAKING people's money and redistributing it based on some principle.
The cup is always half empty for you isn't it?
"the republican party is headed for serious trouble if they don't win the next presidential election, which there is every indication that they will not?"
Oh you must be referring to Bush's 28% approval rating. Of course, Congress' approval rating is even lower at 16%. Which party runs Congress now?
Maybe you're referring to Obama's overwhelming popularity. Of course, he just lost 8 of the last 15 primary states, including the big ones of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Or maybe you're referring to Independent voters supporting Obama. Of course, those numbers have dropped the past two months to be even with McCain.
I know what you must mean, the racial unity of everyone voting for him. Of course, 90+% of blacks voted for Obama, and more whites voted for Clinton. It's shocking to see the same racial divide among democrats that democrats accuse republicans of having. Maybe they'll stop taking the black vote for granted now. Probably not.
Every indication? Take a second look beyond the media headlines.
This area of research has been growing more popular lately. Last year's big language conference had a keynote speaker address the question of brain waves and word recognition. Most of the progress though is based on nouns because they have a core rooted meaning in everyone's head...you basically visualize a generic version of that object in the world. You say hammer, I think of an actual hammer I've seen. It's not really mind reading because the approach falls apart when you start talking about verbs and actions...which are what most conversations and thoughts are about. Actions don't have a stereotypical physical representation in the world, but rather involve several objects with that action, all interacting in some way that defines it. As I understand it, the patterns they observe in the brain then become too complex to capture.
Is it just me, or do those robots look entirely too fragile? Worse yet, the treads appear to be about a hand's width in length. There's no way something like that will be useful out in the wild. It'll come across a 5 inch ridge in the ice and be blocked!