That's if you use corn (as the US appears to be stupidly doing). Use sugarcane, or something genetically engineered for the job (I think there are folks working on algae), and the production process can be vastly more efficient.
I think his issue positions are pretty darned acceptable. He's able to talk nicely to the Right while maintaining a largely traditional Democratic set of positions, without going completely far-Left overboard (see Hillary). Folks who claim Obama has no record are also off-base -- there's quite a bit of legislation he's sponsored, it's generally pretty commendable stuff (as opposed to the traditional solution-in-search-of-a-problem or show-we're-doing-something BS which comes out of Congress these days).
Anyhow, he's running for President, not dictator. Consensus-building is much more important than having the right positions on the issues -- after all, it's Congress that's doing the lawmaking. What we need right now is a President who isn't going to go power-mad overboard again and who can foster a less poisonous political environment. I think Obama is the person to do precisely that.
the fastest ways to code are copyrighted, which they shouldn't be since they'd be utterly obvious to any programer with that standard "ordinary" knowledge in that language
An individual implementation can be copyrighted. A way of doing something can't be covered by copyright, and needs to be patented. That's what you meant, right?
Once you do that, it isn't the traditional Unix model anymore -- it's something more like POSIX ACLs, which Linux *does* support, and which *does* provide the ability to give one group write while another has read.
I think the traditional UNIX model is too simple to call bolting on an List of names and permissions used for Access Control (in place of the user/group/mask approach) a "trivial tweak".
I don't necessarily disagree with your point (and don't know enough about the industry in question to make a compelling argument if I wanted to), though I think the parent was trying to redirect the discussion towards handsets as a whole as opposed to smartphones only. One minor nit:
Qualcomm no longer makes handsets.
I have a brand new Qualcomm on my hip, though it's spelled "Kyocera". (Admittedly, the handset division is a separate company now -- but they're still making phones).
Killing in self-defense, like killing in lawful, justified warfare is not murder, and defending from an invasion is clearly on one side of this boundary while the Iraq war is, at best, vastly more ambiguous.
Further, if an individual incites a war without good cause, that alone is reason to consider the dead from said war to be that individual's moral responsibility.
What kind of idiot OS uses file extensions for application association? That means you can't convert a file to a different format without renaming it (and breaking all external links/shortcuts/references) -- stupid! And why should the filename (which is fully user-modifiable even for my grandma^WCEO) be lumped in with the type metadata (which should be user-modifiable only by people who know what they're doing)?
Linux has magic (and xattr support, perfect for storing MIME types); MacOS has had filesystem-level metadata for ages, long before it got the X on the end of its name. I'd hope Microsoft would support something else by now -- after all, don't they typically get things moderately right by 3.0? Let the stupid convention die; the folks who care about finding an elegant solution are doing something else already. [Obviously, on Linux this only refers to a subset of file managers and desktop libraries].
(Just to be clear, I'm only half serious. But then, I *am* half serious).
One of our current presidential candidates, Barack Obama, didn't buy it the first time and refused to get on that particular bandwagon. (He also has a platform of consensus-building, and demonstrable skill at the same -- something we desperately need after the amount of internal division within this country -- and the balls to bring up topics like condom distribution when talking to Christian conservatives, while also possessing the finesse to avoid making enemies when doing just that).
In my view, agreement with the war was precisely that -- a bandwagon; a way for Senators to demonstrate that they were not soft on defense (as the Right claimed anyone not in agreement with their policies to be; many on the Right went as far as to paint their opponents as "hating America", supporting policies that helped the terrorists win, etc). Those who believe the Right's party line right now see the Left as immoral, godless individuals intent on persecuting them for their religion and forcing societal norms which they see as abomination; those who tow the Left's line see the Right as paranoid, power-hungry, hypocritical, hate-filled and intolerant individuals who either use their religion as a means to an end or follow it blindly. Having been on both sides, neither of these is quite correct -- though I certainly now lean to the Left.
Back to my point, though: Obama has demonstrated a willingness and ability to start bridging that gap -- the hate and fear between the Right and the Left. We need that far, far more than we need another extremist politician (but from the Left rather than the Right this time) -- which is precisely what Hillary appears to be.
If you've elected to subscribe to a health insurance plan, you're hardly being forced to pay the premiums -- you chose to be part of a risk-spreading collective. Hence, elective insurance is acceptable to hardcore Libertarians, while socialized healthcare (or mandatory insurance) is not.
I haven't described myself as a Libertarian in a long time, and no longer agree with them on a substantial number of issues (including socialized healthcare) -- but that's no excuse to be FUDding about the impact of their positions. One doesn't need to be well-off enough to pay for any contingency -- one needs to be well-off enough to join a risk-spreading collective, or have well-off third parties who find it in their interest (for any reason) to assist you. Harsh for those to whom neither of those descriptions applies? Yes, and unapologetically. As harsh as you make it out to be? No.
The concept of a 4-party marriage is legally meaningful -- you have a set of people who opt to give other members of that set specific rights regarding inheritance; decision-making in the event of incapacity; taxation; etc. While it introduces new corner-cases, its practical effects can generally be understood from its description. Your other "demonstrations" of this slippery slope do not have that characteristic (which is to say, readily understood meaning and common-case practical effect).
I've been a member of nontraditional households before, and I don't much like the hoops involved in managing my taxes in such a case. Expanding the legal concept of marriage to contain arbitrary household members would be extremely convenient from a legal and taxation perspective -- and as far as any extralegal ideas of what a marriage may or may not be, why is that the government's concern?
I'm strongly opposed to Hillary based on her legislative record -- her intent to criminalize flag burning, her tendency to overlegislate on tech issues where any kind of "think of the children!" paranoia can be applied, and the general outlook with regard to civil liberties and the appropriate role of government implied by these issues.
The number of people opposed on other grounds is... surprising.
Indeed, we would all prefer a government that does nothing to one that does something against our beliefs. So why are folks like the parent poster bemoaning gridlock when we should be celebrating it instead?
"The black dude" is one helluva politician. Have you heard any of his speeches? He's able to speak to the Religious Right (and has been invited to talk in some traditionally very-Republican venues) while at the same time endorsing policies they've traditionally been opposed to. Obama appears able to bring back some semblance of unity -- or, if not that, at least some level of willingness to listen.
While Hillary is firmly on one side of the Red/Blue gap, Obama appears to be able to bridge it -- and that means much more to me, not just because it's a way of getting more votes, but because having that gap there is tiring. Quoting from his keynote at the 2004 Democratic National Convention:
The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
So -- he hasn't many supremely boneheaded policy decisions (into which category I lump Hillary's think-of-the-children legislation), the legislation he has put his name on looks pretty reasonable, and he looks like he might be able to help to defuse a little bit of the division that's so rampant over this last 8 years.
I'll buy that, and I think a lot of other folks will as well.
Yes, you get to watch people freak out -- but then you get a Republican in the White House again; is it really worth it?
Obama has wide appeal as a candidate; Hillary is appealing to much of the left, but repulsive to many others. (I'm consider myself left, particularly on many social issues -- but all the think-of-the-children pro-regulation legislation Hillary has sponsored just to get votes by pandering to peoples' paranoias leaves me unable to even think about giving her my vote for President -- if she gets the Democratic nomination, I'm voting 3rd-party again).
Yes, you do. The question is whether it's appropriate for the federal government to require such.
I'm not arguing about what is true; I'm arguing about what should be true. If we only focus on "well, this isn't worse than what we already have", we're never going to start digging our way back out.
The law specifies that this new ID would need to be used when boarding an airplane, opening a bank account, or taking several other actions.
Given that in travel via air is frequently the only practical way of getting around, requiring positive ID (and validation of said ID against a database, as the TSA is wont to do) before folks are allowed to fly is indeed a very significant step towards internal passports.
Not that this wasn't an issue previously; John Gilmore's attempts to fly anonymously (and tribulations doing the same) are quite well-documented.
Yah -- Madden was on my Christmas list, and I kind of regret it now -- it's a football game with nifty controls, but that doesn't stop it from being a football game, and that's very much not my thing. It's currently on loan to some friends who have friends who come over occasionally and like football games, but I'm not at all above taking it back and reselling it. (Do you refuse to buy from eBay because of something against them in particular, or just the general risk of buying things from strangers sight-unseen? If it's the former, drop me an email).
I have some friends who think Elebits is the best thing since sliced bread. Me, I'm a little more indifferent having had just played one session -- it's fun, but I'm not raving about it to the extent they are. (Okami is the game I'm raving about these days). What play time I have on the Wii is split between Wii Sports and Zelda -- Zelda starts a little slow (especially for me since I couldn't catch the two fish needed to get past the tutorial 'till a friend pointed out what I was doing wrong), but it doesn't stay that way all game.
Maybe, maybe not. The whole point of the color scheme (and presumably the fonts and such as well) is to make van Eck phreaking harder. I could easily see the scheme which is optimized for making it hard to determine what's on the screen for someone who's only instrument EMSEC attacks also having the side effect of making it hard to determine what's on the screen for someone who's red/green colorblind.
In summary: If it were a red and green scheme optimized for human readability, that's one thing. A red and green scheme optimized for electromagnetic non-readability may be very much a different case.
A recount, or an audit. Randomly select a jurisdiction and recount a statistically significant number of votes. Results vary from what the machine told you? Time for a full recount.
Statisticians are good at this kind of thing -- a 5% variance would be more than enough to get noticed. If you're going to create enough of a variance to make a significant difference in any but the closest of races, it's enough that a properly conducted audit will catch it.
This is especially true if you tie the electronic votes to the paper ones (such that you don't need to find a statistically significant variance to call foul -- just one mismatch will do).
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That's if you use corn (as the US appears to be stupidly doing). Use sugarcane, or something genetically engineered for the job (I think there are folks working on algae), and the production process can be vastly more efficient.
I think his issue positions are pretty darned acceptable. He's able to talk nicely to the Right while maintaining a largely traditional Democratic set of positions, without going completely far-Left overboard (see Hillary). Folks who claim Obama has no record are also off-base -- there's quite a bit of legislation he's sponsored, it's generally pretty commendable stuff (as opposed to the traditional solution-in-search-of-a-problem or show-we're-doing-something BS which comes out of Congress these days).
Anyhow, he's running for President, not dictator. Consensus-building is much more important than having the right positions on the issues -- after all, it's Congress that's doing the lawmaking. What we need right now is a President who isn't going to go power-mad overboard again and who can foster a less poisonous political environment. I think Obama is the person to do precisely that.
An individual implementation can be copyrighted. A way of doing something can't be covered by copyright, and needs to be patented. That's what you meant, right?
Deus Ex. Alice. Half-Life 2.
Once you do that, it isn't the traditional Unix model anymore -- it's something more like POSIX ACLs, which Linux *does* support, and which *does* provide the ability to give one group write while another has read.
I think the traditional UNIX model is too simple to call bolting on an List of names and permissions used for Access Control (in place of the user/group/mask approach) a "trivial tweak".
I don't necessarily disagree with your point (and don't know enough about the industry in question to make a compelling argument if I wanted to), though I think the parent was trying to redirect the discussion towards handsets as a whole as opposed to smartphones only. One minor nit:
Qualcomm no longer makes handsets.
I have a brand new Qualcomm on my hip, though it's spelled "Kyocera". (Admittedly, the handset division is a separate company now -- but they're still making phones).
Killing in self-defense, like killing in lawful, justified warfare is not murder, and defending from an invasion is clearly on one side of this boundary while the Iraq war is, at best, vastly more ambiguous.
Further, if an individual incites a war without good cause, that alone is reason to consider the dead from said war to be that individual's moral responsibility.
What kind of idiot OS uses file extensions for application association? That means you can't convert a file to a different format without renaming it (and breaking all external links/shortcuts/references) -- stupid! And why should the filename (which is fully user-modifiable even for my grandma^WCEO) be lumped in with the type metadata (which should be user-modifiable only by people who know what they're doing)?
Linux has magic (and xattr support, perfect for storing MIME types); MacOS has had filesystem-level metadata for ages, long before it got the X on the end of its name. I'd hope Microsoft would support something else by now -- after all, don't they typically get things moderately right by 3.0? Let the stupid convention die; the folks who care about finding an elegant solution are doing something else already. [Obviously, on Linux this only refers to a subset of file managers and desktop libraries].
(Just to be clear, I'm only half serious. But then, I *am* half serious).
AVI is a container format; you can have any number of codecs stored within an AVI file. Same thing for WAV.
Why is this a problem for Ogg but not AVI?
One of our current presidential candidates, Barack Obama, didn't buy it the first time and refused to get on that particular bandwagon. (He also has a platform of consensus-building, and demonstrable skill at the same -- something we desperately need after the amount of internal division within this country -- and the balls to bring up topics like condom distribution when talking to Christian conservatives, while also possessing the finesse to avoid making enemies when doing just that).
In my view, agreement with the war was precisely that -- a bandwagon; a way for Senators to demonstrate that they were not soft on defense (as the Right claimed anyone not in agreement with their policies to be; many on the Right went as far as to paint their opponents as "hating America", supporting policies that helped the terrorists win, etc). Those who believe the Right's party line right now see the Left as immoral, godless individuals intent on persecuting them for their religion and forcing societal norms which they see as abomination; those who tow the Left's line see the Right as paranoid, power-hungry, hypocritical, hate-filled and intolerant individuals who either use their religion as a means to an end or follow it blindly. Having been on both sides, neither of these is quite correct -- though I certainly now lean to the Left.
Back to my point, though: Obama has demonstrated a willingness and ability to start bridging that gap -- the hate and fear between the Right and the Left. We need that far, far more than we need another extremist politician (but from the Left rather than the Right this time) -- which is precisely what Hillary appears to be.
Not as hard a world as you seem to think.
If you've elected to subscribe to a health insurance plan, you're hardly being forced to pay the premiums -- you chose to be part of a risk-spreading collective. Hence, elective insurance is acceptable to hardcore Libertarians, while socialized healthcare (or mandatory insurance) is not.
I haven't described myself as a Libertarian in a long time, and no longer agree with them on a substantial number of issues (including socialized healthcare) -- but that's no excuse to be FUDding about the impact of their positions. One doesn't need to be well-off enough to pay for any contingency -- one needs to be well-off enough to join a risk-spreading collective, or have well-off third parties who find it in their interest (for any reason) to assist you. Harsh for those to whom neither of those descriptions applies? Yes, and unapologetically. As harsh as you make it out to be? No.
- make medical and financial decisions for me when I am incapacitated
- share responsibility for children within my household
- be considered part of my household for tax purposes (taxing it again as income when another household member helps with the house payment is broken!)
- inherit from me if I die without an explicit will
- etc...
is darned handy. Now, if you want to call it something other than "marriage" just to take away all the societal baggage, that works for me.The concept of a 4-party marriage is legally meaningful -- you have a set of people who opt to give other members of that set specific rights regarding inheritance; decision-making in the event of incapacity; taxation; etc. While it introduces new corner-cases, its practical effects can generally be understood from its description. Your other "demonstrations" of this slippery slope do not have that characteristic (which is to say, readily understood meaning and common-case practical effect).
I've been a member of nontraditional households before, and I don't much like the hoops involved in managing my taxes in such a case. Expanding the legal concept of marriage to contain arbitrary household members would be extremely convenient from a legal and taxation perspective -- and as far as any extralegal ideas of what a marriage may or may not be, why is that the government's concern?
Yes, it is odd.
I'm strongly opposed to Hillary based on her legislative record -- her intent to criminalize flag burning, her tendency to overlegislate on tech issues where any kind of "think of the children!" paranoia can be applied, and the general outlook with regard to civil liberties and the appropriate role of government implied by these issues.
The number of people opposed on other grounds is... surprising.
Indeed, we would all prefer a government that does nothing to one that does something against our beliefs. So why are folks like the parent poster bemoaning gridlock when we should be celebrating it instead?
"The black dude" is one helluva politician. Have you heard any of his speeches? He's able to speak to the Religious Right (and has been invited to talk in some traditionally very-Republican venues) while at the same time endorsing policies they've traditionally been opposed to. Obama appears able to bring back some semblance of unity -- or, if not that, at least some level of willingness to listen.
While Hillary is firmly on one side of the Red/Blue gap, Obama appears to be able to bridge it -- and that means much more to me, not just because it's a way of getting more votes, but because having that gap there is tiring. Quoting from his keynote at the 2004 Democratic National Convention: So -- he hasn't many supremely boneheaded policy decisions (into which category I lump Hillary's think-of-the-children legislation), the legislation he has put his name on looks pretty reasonable, and he looks like he might be able to help to defuse a little bit of the division that's so rampant over this last 8 years.
I'll buy that, and I think a lot of other folks will as well.
I want a government that does The Right Thing or nothing at all; a government that does The Wrong Thing can be harmful in the extreme.
When you've got that big of a stick, you need to be veeery careful about how you use it.
Yes, you get to watch people freak out -- but then you get a Republican in the White House again; is it really worth it?
Obama has wide appeal as a candidate; Hillary is appealing to much of the left, but repulsive to many others. (I'm consider myself left, particularly on many social issues -- but all the think-of-the-children pro-regulation legislation Hillary has sponsored just to get votes by pandering to peoples' paranoias leaves me unable to even think about giving her my vote for President -- if she gets the Democratic nomination, I'm voting 3rd-party again).
I'm not arguing about what is true; I'm arguing about what should be true. If we only focus on "well, this isn't worse than what we already have", we're never going to start digging our way back out.
The law specifies that this new ID would need to be used when boarding an airplane, opening a bank account, or taking several other actions.
Given that in travel via air is frequently the only practical way of getting around, requiring positive ID (and validation of said ID against a database, as the TSA is wont to do) before folks are allowed to fly is indeed a very significant step towards internal passports.
Not that this wasn't an issue previously; John Gilmore's attempts to fly anonymously (and tribulations doing the same) are quite well-documented.
Yah -- Madden was on my Christmas list, and I kind of regret it now -- it's a football game with nifty controls, but that doesn't stop it from being a football game, and that's very much not my thing. It's currently on loan to some friends who have friends who come over occasionally and like football games, but I'm not at all above taking it back and reselling it. (Do you refuse to buy from eBay because of something against them in particular, or just the general risk of buying things from strangers sight-unseen? If it's the former, drop me an email).
I have some friends who think Elebits is the best thing since sliced bread. Me, I'm a little more indifferent having had just played one session -- it's fun, but I'm not raving about it to the extent they are. (Okami is the game I'm raving about these days). What play time I have on the Wii is split between Wii Sports and Zelda -- Zelda starts a little slow (especially for me since I couldn't catch the two fish needed to get past the tutorial 'till a friend pointed out what I was doing wrong), but it doesn't stay that way all game.
Anyhow -- have fun!
Maybe, maybe not. The whole point of the color scheme (and presumably the fonts and such as well) is to make van Eck phreaking harder. I could easily see the scheme which is optimized for making it hard to determine what's on the screen for someone who's only instrument EMSEC attacks also having the side effect of making it hard to determine what's on the screen for someone who's red/green colorblind.
In summary: If it were a red and green scheme optimized for human readability, that's one thing. A red and green scheme optimized for electromagnetic non-readability may be very much a different case.
Statisticians are good at this kind of thing -- a 5% variance would be more than enough to get noticed. If you're going to create enough of a variance to make a significant difference in any but the closest of races, it's enough that a properly conducted audit will catch it.
This is especially true if you tie the electronic votes to the paper ones (such that you don't need to find a statistically significant variance to call foul -- just one mismatch will do).