Do the state laws on restaurant inspections in the State of New York provide for the recording of who frequents those restaurants? Since these video inspections are part of the public record AND pick up everywhere the inspector turns their head, it would seem that if passed, this legislation would amount to government surveillance that could then be searched under the freedom of information act. Or how long before law enforcement or the NSA start accessing these videos? Of course they will say if you don't have anything to hide, then you don't have anything to worry about. That may be, but it still doesn't mean this isn't a government approved invasion of privacy.
If you don't think your inspectors are actually inspecting, then tail them. If you don't think they are writing down all the violations, then send a second inspector. In short, define the problem and address it. Doing so doesn't involve recording everybody in the establishment.
It's all fine to tell the endowment to divest in this or that, but investments need to be well balanced, which includes energy companies that produce fossil fuels. I would imagine that the endowments have made large gains from the oil industry investments, like most other investors have. So, if they divest and the yields are lower, are these 93 faculty members who feel so strongly about it going to take pay cuts?
It's easy to take a stand on an issue when you have no skin in the game.
But from experience... Anyone who switches to Linux, maybe puts up with it for a month and then just buys a new computer or installs the factory-installed OS back on it (eg Windows XP) and decides to just use it until the machine suffers a serious hardware failure. Typically a computer that is still running XP is running non-SATA hard drives, and those are now no longer available, and your only options are PATA2SATA3 devices which are fine if the drive is less than 2TB. Usually the video card (AGP) will blow up, signaling the end of that machine's usefulness.
There are quite a few IDE drives around and will be for quite some time. Even Amazon.com sells them. As for the video card, that would be an issue regardless of the OS.
KDE and Gnome are horrible pieces of crap when it comes to user experience. Linux has a lot of "designed by nerds, for nerds" aspects to it that the average person just doesn't care that much about, and why people prefer Mac OSX if they don't want Windows. OS X doesn't ever throw out the previous user experience. Even iOS doesn't do that. Mac OS feels fundamentally the same since it's inception, and changes were incremental, not drastic (like Windows 2.11 to 3.0, 3.1 to 95 and 95 to XP was the only incremental change, Vista/7 was a drastic change but not terrible compared to the Windows 8/8.1 changes.) Just based on how much changes between version numbers, I'd expect the next version of Windows to throw out the the entire Metro user interface and the Start Menu/desktop interface and it's backwards compatibility and force everyone to use managed.NET 5.0 crap using voice navigation. Ugh no.
The only people who really dislike Gnome or KDE are linux users. Windows users coming to Linux like them very much, with a preference to Gnome over KDE. How do I know this, well, we just finished transitioning another business to use linux on the desktop. This was a smaller deployment with only 150 users, but it was still consistent with the larger ones we have done (with thousands of seats).
Anyway. Short answer, you will fail. Everyone has to be hardcore willing to tinker, which means a lot of lost productivity.
That simply has not been our experience. Users are much more adaptable then people want to give them credit for.
There is a fallacy in your statement. Buying Windows doesn't get you any more than using free linux. Both Microsoft and linux distros provide updates, so that is a wash and both require somebody to maintain/support it, so that cost, too is a wash. In either case, your time is of the same value and not dependent on the operating system in question.
Who is really at fault here for gender bias/discrimination, Google or Khan Academy (KA)? Is this a Google program that KA applied for or is it an internal program of KA that they applied to Google for grant funding?
KA is in control of their curriculum and teachers, couldn't they simply tell the teachers to encourage more girls to enter the field? Why are they having to give teachers financial incentives to do so? OTOH, if this is all Google's doing, what do they have against boys? If a class has 20 seats and you are going to pay for girls to take those seats, then aren't you limiting the number of boys who could take them? One would think that if Google wants to encourage more youth to enter computer science, that they wouldn't care if they were male or female.
People seem to think this is some kind of affirmative action, but it is not. Girls were not discriminated against, they weren't prohibited or kept out of computer science classes. For whatever reason, they chose to take other classes. People holding that this is okay from some sort of false inequality, would be outraged if the funds were only available for boys or LGBT or heterosexuals, etc. So, why is it okay only for girls? This isn't affirmative action, it is discrimination.
Affirmative Action is one of many useful tools in equalising people where inequality exists. It's not always appropriate, but here it seems like it'd be beneficial (provided they can't game the system). Encouraging the participation of females in computer science is a good thing; having females choose another profession purely because they believe CS is a 'male thing' is sad.
The SAT comparison is beyond moronic, and I assume the poster is aware of that. Stop trying to create drama out of nothing - leave that to the professional media outlets, because you'll never beat them at their game.
Are girls not being allowed to take computer science courses? No, as such that means affirmative action doesn't apply. While it might be laudable to encourage more girls to enter the field, active discrimination in the attempt should not be tolerated. What if, Google only paid if boys took the courses, under the guise to get more students to take computer science classes? Would you feel the same?
According to major tech firms, there is a shortage of qualified computer science graduates. Why wouldn't Google be supporting getting more kids into the field, regardless of gender, race, creed, etc.?
In school sports the boy's sports programs are granted a lot more money, even with Title 9. Do you think Ole Miss or Ohio State are as generous as the girls programs (including admissions) as they are with boys football? If benefactors want to pay girls more to learn programming then it is wonderful?
Are you saying that colleges put more money into the sports programs of male tennis, swimming, track and field than they do for the women? Or are you confusing the cost of a football program with these other costs? Before claiming discrimination in college sports, one needs to look at the net cost of those various programs, not the total costs. While I have no doubt that there is still an imbalance, it isn't as great as it would appear on the surface.
As far as benefactors wanting to pay girls more to learn to program, would you fell the same if it were whites, or males, heterosexuals? If it would not be okay to discriminate against others by only funding these groups, why is it okay to do so for girls? While it is laudable to encourage more girls into computer science, it would seem that there are better solutions than outward discrimination.
Besides, why wouldn't Google want to encourage more kids all together?
WTF? Are you seriously claiming that only Christians have marriage? That the last marriage I witnessed wasn't real due to being a Hindi marriage with Gods that have nothing to do with Christ. Or that my marriage is not a real marriage because neither I nor my wife are Christians? Every culture has marriage in some form or another, usually with the blessings of the local religion. Remember that Christianity is a Johny come lately religion based on nothing besides a collection of contradictory books and is no more relevant then any other religion.
No, that is not what I am claiming. However, the modern western notion of marriage is the form handed down from the Holy Roman Empire that was the Catholic Church's version. Yes, other religions have marriage and have always had marriage, my point was merely in context of the predominant Judeo-Christian version that was adopted by the secular western society.
I would contend that just because your rights have been denied for a long time, does not mean they are not rights.
Whie I agree 100% with your statement, it doesn't matter. There is not a right to marry. Even the courts have upheld that. From the court's perspective, this isn't about marriage at all, it is about the legal rights automatically bestowed on the couple once they get married. Most of those rights can bestowed manually, through things like power of attorney, etc., but in marriage, it happens automatically.
Simply put, the courts don't care about marriage. From the legal perspective, the discussion is about the establishment of contracts. Nothing more and nothing less.
Yes, people have been pair bonding, but what we hold as a modern notion of marriage is not what the groups you mention and is directly descendent of what the church taught was Holy Matrimony. As for consent, from the start, the woman had to consent freely. Whether her consent was given freely or not is open for debate, but the whole reason people are asked if they take so and so as their husband/wife, came directly from the catholic church. That is the consent portion.
As for polygamy, the early christian church continued the ban of it because they still thought of themselves as jews and it was banned under the Torah. It isn't a recent thing at all.
As for the age of marriage, I didn't mention it, however, both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament state that one should not marry a child. A woman was considered a child until her period started. As such, without giving a specific number, scholars agree that women could marry somewhere around age 14, give or take personal development.
Yes, it's correct. That's a bigoted perspective, in that it pretends your religion is the only one, then uses it to justify taking a basic human right. Your worldview being painfully simplistic shouldn't affect other people, and you shouldn't have the right to vote for laws that take others' rights(and you should also choose not exercise your vote in that way, morally speaking).
Bigots are wrong and terrible people, you're wrong and a terrible person, but that doesn't mean you should be fired(or forced to resign).
Two issues you bring up are germane in this discussion. First, you state that you shouldn't have the right to vote for laws that take others rights - well, the whole thing about same sex marriage is whether or not people are denied equal protection under the law if the state does not recognize two men or two women who want to marry each other are kept from doing so. From the state's position, marriage is a civil contract and denying somebody the ability to enter into said contract may violate equal protection. I say may, because the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on that issue, yet, and until it does, it could go either way (although my money would be that they say it does violate equal protection). Marriage, in the eyes of the state isn't about love, it isn't about friendship, it isn't about companionship or anything like that. It is simply a legal contract between two people (which is why most countries now have civil unions to describe the relationship between the parties instead of marriage, which comes from the term Holy Matrimony, which has obvious religious overtones).
While one cannot make a valid judgement related to your first point, mainly because it is not up to the people to decide, but the courts (if it were up to the people, they could easily vote against same sex marriages and often have, so majority, evidently, doesn't rule), your second point is valid. And that is (to paraphrase it), bigots are wrong. On the surface that seems simple, but what it really says is that it isn't that religion is the culprit here, but those who use religion to support a wrong position. It may seem like mincing words, but in reality, religion, like any other philosophy, is neither wrong or right. However, the people who subscribe to that philosophy still choose how to act.
Only a minority of the christian religions condemn homosexuality. Most mainstream protestant religions and the catholics do not do so in their doctrines. Therefore, all of this anti-religious sentiment found on slashdot and elsewhere is misdirected and should be focused on the individual committing the act, not to everyone who might subscribe to that religion or philosophy. Lumping all people of religion into a group and assigning traits to that group is just as bigoted as doing so to gays, or blacks, or any other group.
You simply can't fight bigotry with more bigotry. It just won't work.
Marriage is a civil institution. People with religious delusions want everything to be about their cults, but reality doesn't work that way.
Of course the courts have the power to redefine civil marriage.
It's not quite that simple. For centuries there was no separation of church and state in Europe, so it is difficult to say whether marriage was religious or civil as they were one and the same. To further complicate matters, prior to the church instituting it's view of marriage on the people, one could only get married civilly with the express permission of the king, governor or whomever was the legal authority. It was the church that stated that people are free to marry whomever they chose, with certain restrictions (ie couldn't be previously married, free consent, etc.). The church's influence in Western society and culture wasn't just about marriage. It also extended to education (both lower and higher, including universities and the like), legal systems, social norms, philosophy, research and science and numerous other areas that touch modern life. Why can't you marry your first cousin? It's illegal. Why is it illegal? Because the church forbade it long before any monarch or government declared it wrong.
And that really is how things work. Like it or not, pretty much all of modern society has been influenced by religious systems.
The brain was not designed for reading and there are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision.
Nor was it designed for high speed, non-linear scanning of electronic data. It would seem that all this article is really saying is that the brain adapts to the input stimulus it receives. We already knew that.
Funny, when I watch 2D TV, I have no problem telling who is in the foreground and who is in the background, or which light is farther away on the road they are on. Flat surfaces give great representation of depth perception. Go Google M.C. Escher.
You prove my point. Flat surfaces, by definition have zero depth perception. If you think you can tell foreground from background, assuming one is not blurred, then your mind is playing tricks on you. Maybe you are confusing perspective with perception.
You can get consumer-grade NVG equipment for a couple hundred dollars or less now. Here's an example. There's no reason they can't put this technology in cars fairly cheaply.
Yes, and Ford could have fixed the Pinto and GM their cars for less than $1 per car in parts. Are you really assuming that the industry would give it to the consumer at cost? Assuming of course that the equipment you priced could stand up to the harsh environment that an automobile does.
That's awesome, I refuted your invalid point, you claim I refuted nothing by bringing up different crap.
Okay, let me respond to all the crap you'll throw next by pointing out that people who invent things are smarter than you, and more interested in solving problems than pointing out why the solutions won't work.
There, are we done now? Wait, I don't care. You're BORING. cya.
I have no arguments with you. Personally, I hope this is successful. I/we can certainly use the royalties for developing additional ideas.
How many LGBTs were strung up and hung for doing nothing more than looking at another person a certain way?
Out of curiosity I took a look to see what I could find on this topic. There are some notable cases, but it appears to be rather rare. Did you have something specific in mind or was this a turn of phrase? Compared to black lynchings, which thousands are documented, it appears to be not a thing that was common.
My point was that when LGBT are compared to the civil rights abuses and crimes against blacks, there is no comparison and trying to link them is an association fallacy. What happened to blacks is separate from what is going on in with LGBT. Both are wrong, but for different reasons.
So yes, there is discrimination against LGBT and the ability to enter into the legally recognized contract called marriage could be a case of denying equal protection under the law. However, the plight of the LGBT is vastly different than the plight of blacks.
A similar fallacy arises when somebody compares something they don't like to the holocaust. There is no comparison and trying to make one, just like the LGBT comparing their plight to black history, only trivializes what the object being compared to. It is an emotional plea that is actually denying what came before it.
If one says that LGBTs not being able to marry is the same thing that MLK and many others rallied against for the civil rights, one could also say, that all of the sufferings of the blacks, slavery, hangings, beatings, discrimination in all aspects of life, is no worse than two people, in this case LGBTs, not being allowed to marry. It's just not so and many in the black community, view such statements as bigoted, as do Jews when trivial situations today are compared to the holocaust or Nazi Germany.
So, in short, yes, the extreme actions taken against blacks is rare compared to LGBT. As such, the LGBT community should quit comparing themselves to the plight of blacks. There is no real comparision and they cheapen their cause by trivializing the plight of others. Put differently, if they have a case, then make the case, but don't appeal to the public's emotion by linking to something that is totally unrelated and orders of magnitude different in severity and complexity.
If it shows on the dash, then that would certainly be a bad idea. I'm imagining the screen for the driver side view would be embedded in the door (and of course at an angle to face the driver. So it would be just below where you would look for a traditional sideview mirror.
The passenger side screen would be OK to embed in the dash though. It would actually be nearer the driver that way, and less likely to be obstructed by he passenger.
Having multiple screens adds to the cost plus if you have to look to the left instead of a left mirror or to the right instead of a right mirror, what has actually been gained?
Not at all like rear-ending the guy in front of you because he slammed on his brakes while you were busy looking over your shoulder in anticipation of a lane change.
See, that's the problem. People don't look over their shoulder in anticipation of a lane change, because if they did, they'd be looking at the door pillar, which would be blocking their view. Regardless, looking down at the in-dash display or slightly turning your head, would seem to have the same rear-ending danger if the guy in front of you slams on his brakes.
or wear a winter coat while driving (which pushes you forward slightly)
I've found that my winter coats aren't thick enough to significantly impact mirror orientation, and I live in Alaska.
Really, you just need to know whether a vehicle is there or not.
In the lower 48, it seems to be helpful, at least on the freeway, to be able to tell how fast a car is coming up on you, too, before pulling into the other lane.
That's because the backup camera in your 7 Series is a cheap POS. Use an NVG system and you'll have far better vision with the camera than your rearview mirror. If you can afford a 7 Series, you can afford NVG equipment; there's no excuse for that not to be standard on a car like that.
That's not the point. Do you think NVG equipment is going to be standard on most cars and if so, at what cost?
Works fine. The only problem is that the camera is built for viewing the blind spot (the area you *can't* see from the driver's seat turned head, mirrors included), so it's not aimed for driving with. But the imaging quality works fine, and you get depth perception through it.
Have you tried it? What was the problem? What was the car you used? Last I reversed with a camera was in a 2013 CX-9.
Yes, I have tried it, on BMW Series 7. And no, a flat screen does not give you depth perception. If it did, they wouldn't try and sell you 3D televisions.
You miss the point. More than one camera would cover each critical spot, or two or more would cover parts of it, so those spots can still be shown with some failures in the system.
I don't miss any point. How many displays are you going to have in the vehicle? That little in dash display is going to be pretty small to support a panoramic view, or at least the image will be pretty small. Or how many ways can you slice it up to show all of those blind spots and still have something an average person can see with enough detail while not taking their eyes off the road?
A car travelling 70mph goes quite a distance in the amount of time to look down at a display. The more information on that display, the longer one will be distracted from the road ahead to decipher what they are seeing.
Slashdot Mirror
Do the state laws on restaurant inspections in the State of New York provide for the recording of who frequents those restaurants? Since these video inspections are part of the public record AND pick up everywhere the inspector turns their head, it would seem that if passed, this legislation would amount to government surveillance that could then be searched under the freedom of information act. Or how long before law enforcement or the NSA start accessing these videos? Of course they will say if you don't have anything to hide, then you don't have anything to worry about. That may be, but it still doesn't mean this isn't a government approved invasion of privacy.
If you don't think your inspectors are actually inspecting, then tail them. If you don't think they are writing down all the violations, then send a second inspector. In short, define the problem and address it. Doing so doesn't involve recording everybody in the establishment.
It's all fine to tell the endowment to divest in this or that, but investments need to be well balanced, which includes energy companies that produce fossil fuels. I would imagine that the endowments have made large gains from the oil industry investments, like most other investors have. So, if they divest and the yields are lower, are these 93 faculty members who feel so strongly about it going to take pay cuts?
It's easy to take a stand on an issue when you have no skin in the game.
But from experience... Anyone who switches to Linux, maybe puts up with it for a month and then just buys a new computer or installs the factory-installed OS back on it (eg Windows XP) and decides to just use it until the machine suffers a serious hardware failure. Typically a computer that is still running XP is running non-SATA hard drives, and those are now no longer available, and your only options are PATA2SATA3 devices which are fine if the drive is less than 2TB. Usually the video card (AGP) will blow up, signaling the end of that machine's usefulness.
There are quite a few IDE drives around and will be for quite some time. Even Amazon.com sells them. As for the video card, that would be an issue regardless of the OS.
KDE and Gnome are horrible pieces of crap when it comes to user experience. Linux has a lot of "designed by nerds, for nerds" aspects to it that the average person just doesn't care that much about, and why people prefer Mac OSX if they don't want Windows. OS X doesn't ever throw out the previous user experience. Even iOS doesn't do that. Mac OS feels fundamentally the same since it's inception, and changes were incremental, not drastic (like Windows 2.11 to 3.0, 3.1 to 95 and 95 to XP was the only incremental change, Vista/7 was a drastic change but not terrible compared to the Windows 8/8.1 changes.) Just based on how much changes between version numbers, I'd expect the next version of Windows to throw out the the entire Metro user interface and the Start Menu/desktop interface and it's backwards compatibility and force everyone to use managed .NET 5.0 crap using voice navigation. Ugh no.
The only people who really dislike Gnome or KDE are linux users. Windows users coming to Linux like them very much, with a preference to Gnome over KDE. How do I know this, well, we just finished transitioning another business to use linux on the desktop. This was a smaller deployment with only 150 users, but it was still consistent with the larger ones we have done (with thousands of seats).
Anyway. Short answer, you will fail. Everyone has to be hardcore willing to tinker, which means a lot of lost productivity.
That simply has not been our experience. Users are much more adaptable then people want to give them credit for.
Linux is only free if your time is worthless
There is a fallacy in your statement. Buying Windows doesn't get you any more than using free linux. Both Microsoft and linux distros provide updates, so that is a wash and both require somebody to maintain/support it, so that cost, too is a wash. In either case, your time is of the same value and not dependent on the operating system in question.
Who is really at fault here for gender bias/discrimination, Google or Khan Academy (KA)? Is this a Google program that KA applied for or is it an internal program of KA that they applied to Google for grant funding?
KA is in control of their curriculum and teachers, couldn't they simply tell the teachers to encourage more girls to enter the field? Why are they having to give teachers financial incentives to do so? OTOH, if this is all Google's doing, what do they have against boys? If a class has 20 seats and you are going to pay for girls to take those seats, then aren't you limiting the number of boys who could take them? One would think that if Google wants to encourage more youth to enter computer science, that they wouldn't care if they were male or female.
People seem to think this is some kind of affirmative action, but it is not. Girls were not discriminated against, they weren't prohibited or kept out of computer science classes. For whatever reason, they chose to take other classes. People holding that this is okay from some sort of false inequality, would be outraged if the funds were only available for boys or LGBT or heterosexuals, etc. So, why is it okay only for girls? This isn't affirmative action, it is discrimination.
Discrimination is always wrong.
Affirmative Action is one of many useful tools in equalising people where inequality exists. It's not always appropriate, but here it seems like it'd be beneficial (provided they can't game the system). Encouraging the participation of females in computer science is a good thing; having females choose another profession purely because they believe CS is a 'male thing' is sad.
The SAT comparison is beyond moronic, and I assume the poster is aware of that. Stop trying to create drama out of nothing - leave that to the professional media outlets, because you'll never beat them at their game.
Are girls not being allowed to take computer science courses? No, as such that means affirmative action doesn't apply. While it might be laudable to encourage more girls to enter the field, active discrimination in the attempt should not be tolerated. What if, Google only paid if boys took the courses, under the guise to get more students to take computer science classes? Would you feel the same?
According to major tech firms, there is a shortage of qualified computer science graduates. Why wouldn't Google be supporting getting more kids into the field, regardless of gender, race, creed, etc.?
In school sports the boy's sports programs are granted a lot more money, even with Title 9. Do you think Ole Miss or Ohio State are as generous as the girls programs (including admissions) as they are with boys football? If benefactors want to pay girls more to learn programming then it is wonderful?
Are you saying that colleges put more money into the sports programs of male tennis, swimming, track and field than they do for the women? Or are you confusing the cost of a football program with these other costs? Before claiming discrimination in college sports, one needs to look at the net cost of those various programs, not the total costs. While I have no doubt that there is still an imbalance, it isn't as great as it would appear on the surface.
As far as benefactors wanting to pay girls more to learn to program, would you fell the same if it were whites, or males, heterosexuals? If it would not be okay to discriminate against others by only funding these groups, why is it okay to do so for girls? While it is laudable to encourage more girls into computer science, it would seem that there are better solutions than outward discrimination.
Besides, why wouldn't Google want to encourage more kids all together?
I was always taught that discrimination was evil. Maybe Google has a different definition.
WTF? Are you seriously claiming that only Christians have marriage? That the last marriage I witnessed wasn't real due to being a Hindi marriage with Gods that have nothing to do with Christ. Or that my marriage is not a real marriage because neither I nor my wife are Christians?
Every culture has marriage in some form or another, usually with the blessings of the local religion. Remember that Christianity is a Johny come lately religion based on nothing besides a collection of contradictory books and is no more relevant then any other religion.
No, that is not what I am claiming. However, the modern western notion of marriage is the form handed down from the Holy Roman Empire that was the Catholic Church's version. Yes, other religions have marriage and have always had marriage, my point was merely in context of the predominant Judeo-Christian version that was adopted by the secular western society.
I would contend that just because your rights have been denied for a long time, does not mean they are not rights.
Whie I agree 100% with your statement, it doesn't matter. There is not a right to marry. Even the courts have upheld that. From the court's perspective, this isn't about marriage at all, it is about the legal rights automatically bestowed on the couple once they get married. Most of those rights can bestowed manually, through things like power of attorney, etc., but in marriage, it happens automatically.
Simply put, the courts don't care about marriage. From the legal perspective, the discussion is about the establishment of contracts. Nothing more and nothing less.
Yes, people have been pair bonding, but what we hold as a modern notion of marriage is not what the groups you mention and is directly descendent of what the church taught was Holy Matrimony. As for consent, from the start, the woman had to consent freely. Whether her consent was given freely or not is open for debate, but the whole reason people are asked if they take so and so as their husband/wife, came directly from the catholic church. That is the consent portion.
As for polygamy, the early christian church continued the ban of it because they still thought of themselves as jews and it was banned under the Torah. It isn't a recent thing at all.
As for the age of marriage, I didn't mention it, however, both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament state that one should not marry a child. A woman was considered a child until her period started. As such, without giving a specific number, scholars agree that women could marry somewhere around age 14, give or take personal development.
Yes, it's correct. That's a bigoted perspective, in that it pretends your religion is the only one, then uses it to justify taking a basic human right. Your worldview being painfully simplistic shouldn't affect other people, and you shouldn't have the right to vote for laws that take others' rights(and you should also choose not exercise your vote in that way, morally speaking).
Bigots are wrong and terrible people, you're wrong and a terrible person, but that doesn't mean you should be fired(or forced to resign).
Two issues you bring up are germane in this discussion. First, you state that you shouldn't have the right to vote for laws that take others rights - well, the whole thing about same sex marriage is whether or not people are denied equal protection under the law if the state does not recognize two men or two women who want to marry each other are kept from doing so. From the state's position, marriage is a civil contract and denying somebody the ability to enter into said contract may violate equal protection. I say may, because the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on that issue, yet, and until it does, it could go either way (although my money would be that they say it does violate equal protection). Marriage, in the eyes of the state isn't about love, it isn't about friendship, it isn't about companionship or anything like that. It is simply a legal contract between two people (which is why most countries now have civil unions to describe the relationship between the parties instead of marriage, which comes from the term Holy Matrimony, which has obvious religious overtones).
While one cannot make a valid judgement related to your first point, mainly because it is not up to the people to decide, but the courts (if it were up to the people, they could easily vote against same sex marriages and often have, so majority, evidently, doesn't rule), your second point is valid. And that is (to paraphrase it), bigots are wrong. On the surface that seems simple, but what it really says is that it isn't that religion is the culprit here, but those who use religion to support a wrong position. It may seem like mincing words, but in reality, religion, like any other philosophy, is neither wrong or right. However, the people who subscribe to that philosophy still choose how to act.
Only a minority of the christian religions condemn homosexuality. Most mainstream protestant religions and the catholics do not do so in their doctrines. Therefore, all of this anti-religious sentiment found on slashdot and elsewhere is misdirected and should be focused on the individual committing the act, not to everyone who might subscribe to that religion or philosophy. Lumping all people of religion into a group and assigning traits to that group is just as bigoted as doing so to gays, or blacks, or any other group.
You simply can't fight bigotry with more bigotry. It just won't work.
Marriage is a civil institution. People with religious delusions want everything to be about their cults, but reality doesn't work that way.
Of course the courts have the power to redefine civil marriage.
It's not quite that simple. For centuries there was no separation of church and state in Europe, so it is difficult to say whether marriage was religious or civil as they were one and the same. To further complicate matters, prior to the church instituting it's view of marriage on the people, one could only get married civilly with the express permission of the king, governor or whomever was the legal authority. It was the church that stated that people are free to marry whomever they chose, with certain restrictions (ie couldn't be previously married, free consent, etc.). The church's influence in Western society and culture wasn't just about marriage. It also extended to education (both lower and higher, including universities and the like), legal systems, social norms, philosophy, research and science and numerous other areas that touch modern life. Why can't you marry your first cousin? It's illegal. Why is it illegal? Because the church forbade it long before any monarch or government declared it wrong.
And that really is how things work. Like it or not, pretty much all of modern society has been influenced by religious systems.
The brain was not designed for reading and there are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision.
Nor was it designed for high speed, non-linear scanning of electronic data. It would seem that all this article is really saying is that the brain adapts to the input stimulus it receives. We already knew that.
Funny, when I watch 2D TV, I have no problem telling who is in the foreground and who is in the background, or which light is farther away on the road they are on. Flat surfaces give great representation of depth perception. Go Google M.C. Escher.
You prove my point. Flat surfaces, by definition have zero depth perception. If you think you can tell foreground from background, assuming one is not blurred, then your mind is playing tricks on you. Maybe you are confusing perspective with perception.
You can get consumer-grade NVG equipment for a couple hundred dollars or less now. Here's an example. There's no reason they can't put this technology in cars fairly cheaply.
Yes, and Ford could have fixed the Pinto and GM their cars for less than $1 per car in parts. Are you really assuming that the industry would give it to the consumer at cost? Assuming of course that the equipment you priced could stand up to the harsh environment that an automobile does.
That's awesome, I refuted your invalid point, you claim I refuted nothing by bringing up different crap.
Okay, let me respond to all the crap you'll throw next by pointing out that people who invent things are smarter than you, and more interested in solving problems than pointing out why the solutions won't work.
There, are we done now? Wait, I don't care. You're BORING. cya.
I have no arguments with you. Personally, I hope this is successful. I/we can certainly use the royalties for developing additional ideas.
How many LGBTs were strung up and hung for doing nothing more than looking at another person a certain way?
Out of curiosity I took a look to see what I could find on this topic. There are some notable cases, but it appears to be rather rare. Did you have something specific in mind or was this a turn of phrase? Compared to black lynchings, which thousands are documented, it appears to be not a thing that was common.
My point was that when LGBT are compared to the civil rights abuses and crimes against blacks, there is no comparison and trying to link them is an association fallacy. What happened to blacks is separate from what is going on in with LGBT. Both are wrong, but for different reasons.
So yes, there is discrimination against LGBT and the ability to enter into the legally recognized contract called marriage could be a case of denying equal protection under the law. However, the plight of the LGBT is vastly different than the plight of blacks.
A similar fallacy arises when somebody compares something they don't like to the holocaust. There is no comparison and trying to make one, just like the LGBT comparing their plight to black history, only trivializes what the object being compared to. It is an emotional plea that is actually denying what came before it.
If one says that LGBTs not being able to marry is the same thing that MLK and many others rallied against for the civil rights, one could also say, that all of the sufferings of the blacks, slavery, hangings, beatings, discrimination in all aspects of life, is no worse than two people, in this case LGBTs, not being allowed to marry. It's just not so and many in the black community, view such statements as bigoted, as do Jews when trivial situations today are compared to the holocaust or Nazi Germany.
So, in short, yes, the extreme actions taken against blacks is rare compared to LGBT. As such, the LGBT community should quit comparing themselves to the plight of blacks. There is no real comparision and they cheapen their cause by trivializing the plight of others. Put differently, if they have a case, then make the case, but don't appeal to the public's emotion by linking to something that is totally unrelated and orders of magnitude different in severity and complexity.
If it shows on the dash, then that would certainly be a bad idea. I'm imagining the screen for the driver side view would be embedded in the door (and of course at an angle to face the driver. So it would be just below where you would look for a traditional sideview mirror.
The passenger side screen would be OK to embed in the dash though. It would actually be nearer the driver that way, and less likely to be obstructed by he passenger.
Having multiple screens adds to the cost plus if you have to look to the left instead of a left mirror or to the right instead of a right mirror, what has actually been gained?
Not at all like rear-ending the guy in front of you because he slammed on his brakes while you were busy looking over your shoulder in anticipation of a lane change.
See, that's the problem. People don't look over their shoulder in anticipation of a lane change, because if they did, they'd be looking at the door pillar, which would be blocking their view. Regardless, looking down at the in-dash display or slightly turning your head, would seem to have the same rear-ending danger if the guy in front of you slams on his brakes.
or wear a winter coat while driving (which pushes you forward slightly)
I've found that my winter coats aren't thick enough to significantly impact mirror orientation, and I live in Alaska.
Really, you just need to know whether a vehicle is there or not.
In the lower 48, it seems to be helpful, at least on the freeway, to be able to tell how fast a car is coming up on you, too, before pulling into the other lane.
That's because the backup camera in your 7 Series is a cheap POS. Use an NVG system and you'll have far better vision with the camera than your rearview mirror. If you can afford a 7 Series, you can afford NVG equipment; there's no excuse for that not to be standard on a car like that.
That's not the point. Do you think NVG equipment is going to be standard on most cars and if so, at what cost?
Works fine. The only problem is that the camera is built for viewing the blind spot (the area you *can't* see from the driver's seat turned head, mirrors included), so it's not aimed for driving with. But the imaging quality works fine, and you get depth perception through it.
Have you tried it? What was the problem? What was the car you used? Last I reversed with a camera was in a 2013 CX-9.
Yes, I have tried it, on BMW Series 7. And no, a flat screen does not give you depth perception. If it did, they wouldn't try and sell you 3D televisions.
I assume you never need to drive a rental car then
I have yet to find a rental car that didn't have adjustable mirrors. Do rentals where you live have fixed mirrors?
Once I adjust the rental car mirrors in exactly the same way (to avoid seeing the car), I don't worry about them again, as there are no other drivers.
It doesn't matter if they have adjustable mirrors, you were talking about never having to adjust the mirrors.
You miss the point. More than one camera would cover each critical spot, or two or more would cover parts of it, so those spots can still be shown with some failures in the system.
I don't miss any point. How many displays are you going to have in the vehicle? That little in dash display is going to be pretty small to support a panoramic view, or at least the image will be pretty small. Or how many ways can you slice it up to show all of those blind spots and still have something an average person can see with enough detail while not taking their eyes off the road?
A car travelling 70mph goes quite a distance in the amount of time to look down at a display. The more information on that display, the longer one will be distracted from the road ahead to decipher what they are seeing.