To be fair, the Bush platform is only against embryonic stem cell research. Bush actually funded half a billion dollars worth of adult stem cell research during his first 4 years (it should be noted that no long term treatments have been developed with embryonic stem cells, but adult stem cells on the other hand have found their way into something like 5 current working treatments).
As for the No Child Left Behind Act, Kerry also came out in firm support of the act. Although he says he can fund it better than Bush did. If you are looking for an issue to differentiate Bush from the pack, this isn't the issue to use.
As a dedicated independent voter in the US, it constantly amazes me that the right and the left are able to pump so much SHIT information into the media. What scares me even more is that so many of you actually believe it.
As for the choice between a Bush and a Kerry presidency, most independents such as myself were quite pissed that we had to chose between two people few of us thought would be an excellent leader. This two part system needs to end so we can get some real leaders on the ballet, not your party's most favorite whippingboy.
Not withstanding, referring to the Iraq War as the Crusades version 2.0 is quite a stretch. Neither our nation, it's people, nor it's armed forces follows a single religion. Regardless of what you think the President says.
It's like saying that the Civil War was a religious war based off the religious preference Lincoln at the time.
I can't wait to hear the Bushies defend this one. Let's hear a justification for something like this from the Mighty Whitey Righty. And don't give me that crap about Democrats voted for it, too. All this is happening on YOUR watch and YOU own it.
The only difference between a democrat and a republican is the rhetoric. If you want change, stop spouting bullshit and get involved in politics at your local level.
Just because you don't like your president doesn't give you license to ignore governmental process. This treaty was organized by the EXECUTIVE, but ratified by CONGRESS. In other words, CONGRESS is the final arbitor.
This treaty and similar ones have been ON THE BOOKS for quite some time. Welcome to reality. Take a fucking civics class... please.
I bet the people who voted for Bush never knew they were voting for a restart of the crusades. Well the last one didn't go so well maybe this time the christians will win. But then again maybe not.
Now if being a "christian" was a requirement to be an American or join the American Armed Forces, you might have a point. The currently insane recruiting bonuses being paid to Muslim and Buddist chaplans by the U.S. Army seems to be a strong counterpoint to this "christian crusade" you alude to.
Besides, wasn't the point of the crusades to take back the "holy land"? Wasn't that what Europe finally accomplished when they seceded the landmass we now know as "Isreal" to the Jews after WW2?
And the israeli civilian casualties are not all innocent, either: the current aggressive government was democratically elected, and AFAIK almost everybody gets to serve in the army.
Then... by this same rational, palestistian citizens aren't innocents either.
Even if a population democractically elects a leader who commits an action you view as a crime, indescriminately targetting that population is still an arbitrary action.
After all, how do you know how that the person you just killed didn't vote for the opposition? The world hasn't seen a leader win 100% of the popular vote since Saddam Hussain last declared himself the winner of his last election.
And I think we would all agree getting 100% of any national population to agree on anything is pretty much impossible.
Can you quantify that? Since the equipment was already paid for, the only marginal cost to run SETI-at-home was the electricity his CPU consumed over and above how much it would have used were SETI not running. How much did we pay for the power to fuel those extra cycles? Unless you can answer that, it's not obvious that he wasted a measurable number of tax dollars.
I can't quantify it, but I might be able to qualify it in hypothetical terms as a general validator of the department's rule.
Suppose the server he installed this on is used to clear low income families for some service offered by this department. Lets say to verify if low income families are eligible for welfare or some other type of assistance.
It is hypothetically possible that installing this software could cause an interruption in that processing service (outage or reduction in required processing capacity).
As a consiquence, one can imagine that maybe it takes a couple extra days or maybe weeks for this low income family to get the benefits they need while they are manually cleared by the department.
Personally I would have weighed the actually harm done by his act vs the employees contributions (present and future) to determine how to deal with him (ie maybe file an exception to the departments rule). However, this may be the straw that broke the camel's back.
Re:World of Warcraft is by far the best MMORPG.
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What makes it so great? Player v. Player and Faction v. Faction conflict stratified by server type.
...that we can choose Miss America from 50 contestants, but we just can't handle six legitimate candidates for President (who are on the ballot in enough states to win a majority of the Electoral College) in a debate?
Are you suggesting that our candidates for president should participate in a swimsuit competition?
Hmm... Maybe we could have a talent competition too?
Have you ever considered the possibility that maybe the mainstream media is *neutral* and that the sources that you're comparing them to -- Ann Coulter, Karl Rove, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh -- are just *very* Republican? Nope.
If i had modpoints, I would mod Slashdot -1 offtopic. Ya, or -1, Reduntant for posting a 2002 NYT article just to prove to their political minders that they are one with the party.
When it comes to politics, slashdot editors are not interrested in presenting a wide survey of opinions. Rather they will only post what their party believes will help their political campaign.
Isn't it true other countries cannot take pictures of other countries (like the US), according to the US, but it's fine and dandy for the US to take spy pictures of others?
Durring the Cold War, the USSR used to have a number of satelites over the US for this exact purpose.
I wouldn't be supprised if China had them up there now as well. Assuming of course that they don't want to just get the imagry from the hundreds of open source channels that exist on the open market.
As far as I know, the US hasn't shot any of them down yet.
But more birds are killed every minute by deforestation and destruction of wetlands, than will be killed by this thing in its entire working lifetime.
Gawd I hope so, if one single windmill could cause the same damage as a whole world full of loggers, they'd have to build a KFC franchise under it to collect all the chunks of bird.
Ultimately, your point is irrelevant to the scenario I was responding to. If they are kicking your door down, you wouldn't have the chance to validate the warrant until after their "raid" has come to a conclusion anyway.
In such cases, a warrant is only a method of ensuring due process occured after the fact. Not as some mechanism for actually preventing abuse.
A warrant lists the court the judge represents, has his signature and his phone number. Any moron who knows how to use a phone book and a telephone should have the ability to call either the court to verify the judge and the judge to check the warrant's validity. Or at the worst call the lawyer they have on retainer and have them do it.
This hardly seems like a terrible burden for a functionary working for a telecommunications provider.
These excess embryos are often discarded if a pregnancy is successful. Is it murder to throw out these fertilized eggs? Is it murder at the two-cell stage? Four cells? Eight? Is it murder, or not, if the embryos are never implanted?
In activist terms, I believe the true way to define if something alive depends on whether or not the lifeform in question is "cute" or "adorable".
This is why an activist can rationally (in a limited sense) believe that a one cell bacterium, a two cell human and a mosquito are not a true lifeform. Thus they can feel free to kill them without moral ramifications.
What I can't figure out is how someone can be for pre-natal abortion (err I mean "choice"), but not for post-natal abortion (death penalty).
Even if they asked for a warrant, they aren't qualified to tell if one is fake or not. Hell, a Japanese language insurance form may do the trick.
Is it really that hard to determine if a warrant is valid? Each must be signed by a judge to be valid and I believe the judge also must list his/her phone number.
Noone is saying they are mutually exclusive. But the type of federal government you have is typically defined by how you elect your head of state. In the case of the USA, a republic pure and simple.
As I said, the USA overall has many democratic processes, but it's not a true democracy. Its a republic.
Likewise it pains me that something this simple is some untenable by so many people.
Worst of all, the person who posted this story doesn't even realize he is living in a republic. It may have a lot of democratic processes, especially at the state level, but it's first and foremost a republic.
So we have the electorial college and senate, which part is redundant?
Think of this redundancy as a RAID setup. The drives may be redundent, but when the data is important, the redundency serves a useful purpose.
The exective branch is composed of governement agencies that enforce law and ultimately is headed by the president. It also provides a (small depending on your political affliation in a given year) measure of representative appointment within the judical branch.
The legislature branch is in charge of creating laws which the exective branch enforce, including the making of laws that determine funding for these agencies. It also establishes the proper jurisdiction of the exective and judical branches. It also provides an avenue for the removal of executive and judicial actors through a hearing process known simple as "articles of impeachment". The legislature is bicameral, meaning it consists of two entities or houses. The legislature was designed in this way so that the will of the majority will be served while protecting the rights of the minority. Functionally t his means that to overcome conflicts between the majority (House) and the Minority (Senate), compromise must be reached between the two.
The judicial branch provides many roles in society, which include ensuring that the executive branch follows the instructions of the legislative branch and ensures that the inaliable rights of ordinary citizens are not trampled by either.
What you see as redundancy is actually done intentinally to curb the power of the majority over the exective branch since it is the principle and most independent "acting" force in American governement (Example: FBI, DEA, DoD, DoS, IRS, CIA, etc are in the exective branch).
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, the Bush platform is only against embryonic stem cell research. Bush actually funded half a billion dollars worth of adult stem cell research during his first 4 years (it should be noted that no long term treatments have been developed with embryonic stem cells, but adult stem cells on the other hand have found their way into something like 5 current working treatments).
As for the No Child Left Behind Act, Kerry also came out in firm support of the act. Although he says he can fund it better than Bush did. If you are looking for an issue to differentiate Bush from the pack, this isn't the issue to use.
As a dedicated independent voter in the US, it constantly amazes me that the right and the left are able to pump so much SHIT information into the media. What scares me even more is that so many of you actually believe it.
As for the choice between a Bush and a Kerry presidency, most independents such as myself were quite pissed that we had to chose between two people few of us thought would be an excellent leader. This two part system needs to end so we can get some real leaders on the ballet, not your party's most favorite whippingboy.
So why is it OK for the EU to select a president without a popular vote, but its not OK for the US to select a president without a popular vote?
Since NASA is getting a budget increase this year...
...do you mean NASA's relevance is actually increasing?
Not withstanding, referring to the Iraq War as the Crusades version 2.0 is quite a stretch. Neither our nation, it's people, nor it's armed forces follows a single religion. Regardless of what you think the President says.
It's like saying that the Civil War was a religious war based off the religious preference Lincoln at the time.
I can't wait to hear the Bushies defend this one. Let's hear a justification for something like this from the Mighty Whitey Righty. And don't give me that crap about Democrats voted for it, too. All this is happening on YOUR watch and YOU own it.
The only difference between a democrat and a republican is the rhetoric. If you want change, stop spouting bullshit and get involved in politics at your local level.
Just because you don't like your president doesn't give you license to ignore governmental process. This treaty was organized by the EXECUTIVE, but ratified by CONGRESS. In other words, CONGRESS is the final arbitor.
This treaty and similar ones have been ON THE BOOKS for quite some time. Welcome to reality. Take a fucking civics class... please.
I bet the people who voted for Bush never knew they were voting for a restart of the crusades. Well the last one didn't go so well maybe this time the christians will win. But then again maybe not.
Now if being a "christian" was a requirement to be an American or join the American Armed Forces, you might have a point. The currently insane recruiting bonuses being paid to Muslim and Buddist chaplans by the U.S. Army seems to be a strong counterpoint to this "christian crusade" you alude to.
Besides, wasn't the point of the crusades to take back the "holy land"? Wasn't that what Europe finally accomplished when they seceded the landmass we now know as "Isreal" to the Jews after WW2?
The crusades are over, and Europe won.
And the israeli civilian casualties are not all innocent, either: the current aggressive government was democratically elected, and AFAIK almost everybody gets to serve in the army.
Then... by this same rational, palestistian citizens aren't innocents either.
Even if a population democractically elects a leader who commits an action you view as a crime, indescriminately targetting that population is still an arbitrary action.
After all, how do you know how that the person you just killed didn't vote for the opposition? The world hasn't seen a leader win 100% of the popular vote since Saddam Hussain last declared himself the winner of his last election.
And I think we would all agree getting 100% of any national population to agree on anything is pretty much impossible.
Can you quantify that? Since the equipment was already paid for, the only marginal cost to run SETI-at-home was the electricity his CPU consumed over and above how much it would have used were SETI not running. How much did we pay for the power to fuel those extra cycles? Unless you can answer that, it's not obvious that he wasted a measurable number of tax dollars.
I can't quantify it, but I might be able to qualify it in hypothetical terms as a general validator of the department's rule.
Suppose the server he installed this on is used to clear low income families for some service offered by this department. Lets say to verify if low income families are eligible for welfare or some other type of assistance.
It is hypothetically possible that installing this software could cause an interruption in that processing service (outage or reduction in required processing capacity).
As a consiquence, one can imagine that maybe it takes a couple extra days or maybe weeks for this low income family to get the benefits they need while they are manually cleared by the department.
Personally I would have weighed the actually harm done by his act vs the employees contributions (present and future) to determine how to deal with him (ie maybe file an exception to the departments rule). However, this may be the straw that broke the camel's back.
What makes it so great?
Player v. Player and Faction v. Faction conflict stratified by server type.
PvE Servers: Battleground, Situational & Event driven PvP (all voluntary I believe).
PvP Servers: all PvP all the time.
Overtly stated goal of allowing all class/race combinations the abilities they need to solo to max level (though slower than grouping in most cases).
Well developed storyline following previous Warcraft games.
Both quest and combat based experience advancement.
Instanced dungeons.
Quest and quest resource sharing.
Numerous well developed tradeskill activities and rewards.
Really most of the things you'd expect in a highly addictive MMORPG, and probably a few extras.
...that we can choose Miss America from 50 contestants, but we just can't handle six legitimate candidates for President (who are on the ballot in enough states to win a majority of the Electoral College) in a debate?
Are you suggesting that our candidates for president should participate in a swimsuit competition?
Hmm... Maybe we could have a talent competition too?
Have you ever considered the possibility that maybe the mainstream media is *neutral* and that the sources that you're comparing them to -- Ann Coulter, Karl Rove, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh -- are just *very* Republican?
Nope.
If i had modpoints, I would mod Slashdot -1 offtopic.
Ya, or -1, Reduntant for posting a 2002 NYT article just to prove to their political minders that they are one with the party.
When it comes to politics, slashdot editors are not interrested in presenting a wide survey of opinions. Rather they will only post what their party believes will help their political campaign.
Have a pleasent news-cycle citizen.
Isn't it true other countries cannot take pictures of other countries (like the US), according to the US, but it's fine and dandy for the US to take spy pictures of others?
Durring the Cold War, the USSR used to have a number of satelites over the US for this exact purpose.
I wouldn't be supprised if China had them up there now as well. Assuming of course that they don't want to just get the imagry from the hundreds of open source channels that exist on the open market.
As far as I know, the US hasn't shot any of them down yet.
But more birds are killed every minute by deforestation and destruction of wetlands, than will be killed by this thing in its entire working lifetime.
Gawd I hope so, if one single windmill could cause the same damage as a whole world full of loggers, they'd have to build a KFC franchise under it to collect all the chunks of bird.
Maybe this will lead to birds with super eyesight or bigger brains. [E]
Like how poisoning our rivers has created a genetic strain of talking catfish.
If anything, those windmills will bring back more "natural" conditions.
Minus the part with whirling steel blades that regularly vivisect birds and flying mammals you mean?
Ultimately, your point is irrelevant to the scenario I was responding to. If they are kicking your door down, you wouldn't have the chance to validate the warrant until after their "raid" has come to a conclusion anyway.
In such cases, a warrant is only a method of ensuring due process occured after the fact. Not as some mechanism for actually preventing abuse.
A warrant lists the court the judge represents, has his signature and his phone number. Any moron who knows how to use a phone book and a telephone should have the ability to call either the court to verify the judge and the judge to check the warrant's validity. Or at the worst call the lawyer they have on retainer and have them do it.
This hardly seems like a terrible burden for a functionary working for a telecommunications provider.
These excess embryos are often discarded if a pregnancy is successful. Is it murder to throw out these fertilized eggs? Is it murder at the two-cell stage? Four cells? Eight? Is it murder, or not, if the embryos are never implanted?
In activist terms, I believe the true way to define if something alive depends on whether or not the lifeform in question is "cute" or "adorable".
This is why an activist can rationally (in a limited sense) believe that a one cell bacterium, a two cell human and a mosquito are not a true lifeform. Thus they can feel free to kill them without moral ramifications.
What I can't figure out is how someone can be for pre-natal abortion (err I mean "choice"), but not for post-natal abortion (death penalty).
Even if they asked for a warrant, they aren't qualified to tell if one is fake or not. Hell, a Japanese language insurance form may do the trick.
Is it really that hard to determine if a warrant is valid? Each must be signed by a judge to be valid and I believe the judge also must list his/her phone number.
Anyone out there who knows for sure?
What will the kurds and the sunnis do if the parliment if 2/3 shia?
If they are smart they will band together and demand a republican form of government.
why is it that medical marijuana is still illegal by federal standards and not the decision of the states or the individuals it affects?
Interstate commerce for one.
Noone is saying they are mutually exclusive. But the type of federal government you have is typically defined by how you elect your head of state. In the case of the USA, a republic pure and simple.
As I said, the USA overall has many democratic processes, but it's not a true democracy. Its a republic.
Likewise it pains me that something this simple is some untenable by so many people.
Worst of all, the person who posted this story doesn't even realize he is living in a republic. It may have a lot of democratic processes, especially at the state level, but it's first and foremost a republic.
And don't forget to add to the problem the thousands of voters who voted both in New York and Florida.
So we have the electorial college and senate, which part is redundant?
Think of this redundancy as a RAID setup. The drives may be redundent, but when the data is important, the redundency serves a useful purpose.
The exective branch is composed of governement agencies that enforce law and ultimately is headed by the president. It also provides a (small depending on your political affliation in a given year) measure of representative appointment within the judical branch.
The legislature branch is in charge of creating laws which the exective branch enforce, including the making of laws that determine funding for these agencies. It also establishes the proper jurisdiction of the exective and judical branches. It also provides an avenue for the removal of executive and judicial actors through a hearing process known simple as "articles of impeachment". The legislature is bicameral, meaning it consists of two entities or houses. The legislature was designed in this way so that the will of the majority will be served while protecting the rights of the minority. Functionally t his means that to overcome conflicts between the majority (House) and the Minority (Senate), compromise must be reached between the two.
The judicial branch provides many roles in society, which include ensuring that the executive branch follows the instructions of the legislative branch and ensures that the inaliable rights of ordinary citizens are not trampled by either.
What you see as redundancy is actually done intentinally to curb the power of the majority over the exective branch since it is the principle and most independent "acting" force in American governement (Example: FBI, DEA, DoD, DoS, IRS, CIA, etc are in the exective branch).