Thank you! Someone who actualy comprehends the words they read. "You're a no-good rice eating chink" - derogatory and racist, unacceptable. "I found the chink in his armor" - NOT related to racist meaning!
Do people who consider themselves 'gay' and use that term to describe themselves even realize that the original meaning of the word simply meant "happy"? It was gradually taken over by other uses and now it is generally accepted as meaning 'homosexual' and to many people it means 'male homosexual' exclusively.
There are parts of the country where soda is referred to as 'pop' but that doesn't mean people are asking you for a grandparent or a punch in the jaw when they say "give me a pop". In the same way in my encounters with people saying "that's totally gay" they don't mean "that's totally homosexual" or "I hate that in the same way I hate homosexuals" they in fact mean it as "that's totally stupid/absurd/odd". It is an ALTERNATE SLANG MEANING that has been appropriated by a subset of the culture, just as homosexuals and society re-appropriated the word 'gay' itself about a generation or two ago.
In New England we say 'wicked' to mean 'very', e.g. "The new console is wicked cool". However in this usage it has nothing to do with being evil. In some places in NY people use 'mad' the same way New Englanders use wicked, but they don't mean angry in any way. A word can have two different and unrelated meanings!
To be offended by an alternate use of a word you happen to associate with is silly when it's patently not being used offensively. Could it be used offensively? Has it been? Yes. But this is not one of those examples. And in the case of the word gay itself the argument even becomes hypocrtical since gay already had a different meaning which has been appropriated by today's culture to mean something completely different. Language evolves, and slang is simply a genetic mutation of language, often here today gone tomorrow. If you can't get over that then you're taking yourself way too seriously and need to find a better battle to fight.
I don't disagree with what you said but the fact that a military base was comprimised and didn't alert the local papers is hardly surprising. Beside the fact that most of what goes on in a base and the resources it uses are classified (as in the network configuration is classified, security through obscurity is not a sole defense but can be useful as part of a larger defense plan), I don't think every time they have a security breach it's in their best interests to alert everyone.
Anything we do, or don't do, will get criticized, unless we let them all go and wait for another terrorist attack.
Actually I think pretty much everyone agrees that giving them due process in an actual hearing with the ability to enter evidence, review the evidence against them (currently almost all of the "reviews" include secret evidence that cannot be refuted by the accused because they don't know what it is the government is even alleging) and in general be afforded the actual protections outlined for POWs or enemy soldiers under the Geneva conventions WOULD be acceptable. The Geneva conventions define enemy soldiers, POWs and civilian criminals, the "unlawful combatant" term is one which was invented by the US government to do an end-run around the convention and essentially process prisoners however they choose. Lest you forget the US agreed to the Geneva conventions, including the intent that they covered all forms of prisoners captured in wartime. Following the conventions would be acceptable to all.
I really gotta stop responding to these despicable cowards.
But you're saving some of us the trouble and we do appreciate it, hence your incredible karma harvest from this thread;). Your reasoning is sound and it's despicable that the international community lets such flagrant violations of international law and the rules of war by the US go by unchecked. If we're at war, the rules of war apply, if we're not at war then the president cannot assume wartime powers. They want it both ways.
And as for people saying we will process war criminals when the "war ends" or when "Al Queda surrenders" these are laughable concepts (if they weren't so unfunny). The US is waging a War on Terrorism. A concept, a method of fighting. A literal eternal struggle has been set up. And besides the fact that there will always be a group willing to bomb something for their ideals, this administration has been gradually increasing the scope of what they define as terrorism. Very soon now anyone performing an act of a violent nature will be considered a 'terrorist' unless they are doing it in military uniform by a recognized country. Even then I'm willing to bet regimes the US chooses not to recognize politcally will be labeled as terrorist armies, despite being armies of sovereign nations. Uh, well this was meant to be a short reply, sorry for venting to the quire, as it were. Keep up the good posts.
If when properly performed medically so as not to cause physical damage we can agree the procedure is "neutral and pointless" except for tradition then why does it warrent a government ban? This is exactly the kind of unecesary legislation that removes (other kinds of) freedoms for no reason and generally clogs the system and causes government bloat. And I never said every kind of circumcision caused no harm, though I can see how you may have implied that since you seemed to be taking the extreme opposite position. But let's face it, given that we know many (all? I admit I do not know if it is mandated by the faith) Jewish men are circumsized - I use this example only because this would represent a significant population size - and many others are for other reasons, we have a large pool of the male population that are circumsized. Are emotional trauma rampant in this pool of men? The answer is no. Every male friend that the issue has ever come up with that I know has been circumcised, none of them exhibit the problems outlined. So ok, my pool of friends is small, but if there's some huge population out there and you're trying to advocate that some significant portion of them experience these problems why is it more or less unheard of? Such a wdiespread and longstanding practice would surely have by now brought to light such egregious issues.
Go read some of my other replies in this thread and take that information in. I fully admit that if someone is performing this procedure on a child rather than an infant or newborn it could indeed have devastating effects emotionally, that is a truly traumatizing experience. So in that case the ban is misguided, ban the procedure from the age of so many months until the age of legal consent. that way it could not be forced on a child who would be emotionally damaged by it. But honestly, to say that a circumcision performed wihtin a few weeks of birth could make you withdrawn your whole life is laughable. Birth itself is more traumatic, and there are plenty of premature babies who spend their first months of life in an incubator which is certainly traumatic, yet they grow up to be normal healthy people. (we're assuming these are not prematurely born because of, for example, a drug-addicted mother, that causes other problems) And there are plenty of non-circumcised people who have been quiet, withdrawn, timid their entire lives. Just because one's emotional development did not occur along the mainstream lines is no reason to tie it to a particular event as proof. And since there is no direct proof (again, we're not talking about this being done to a child when they will have direct memory of it) then your "better safe than sorry" argument for banning it is rubbish. Let's go ahead and ban anything else that may have the possibilty of causing such emotional trauma - it's patently inmpossible! The point here is overregulation when there is no definite need for it. If it's harmless when done properly then set up a system to ensure it's performed properly and give people the choice to continue with the tradition. If evidence comes to light that PROVES it's harmful then ban it. The vast majority of cases over centuries say this is not a harmful procedure when performed at the start of life, so a complete ban is too much. Instead focus the energies on banning the practices which ARE harmful, such as an inexperienced doctor doing it, or doing it to a child older than whatever age (2 or 3 months maybe?) when it very likely would cause some harm. If we petition the government to just outright ban any activity which may cause someone at sometime harm then we have no freedom. Life itself is inherently terminal, and inherently dangerous. And some people are meek because they were born meek, and some people are mentally disbaled because they were born mentally disabled. There is an awful lot of human development and nature vs nuture that is not well understood, but to point to a possible cause of a development problem and say "ban it because that may or may not be it" is just shooting in the dark
There are many hidden places in Windows where the default browser might not be Firefox.
Very true, I found one of these today, itnerestingly enough in Flash itself. It indicated there was an update available, and the link to describe the details of the update opened up IE despite FF being my default on this machine. Talk about a security hole, an unsecure app, opening an unsecure broswer, all w/o checking user prefs on the machine or even alerting the user to the action before it is taken. Brilliant! (I know, dump flash you say, but I can't for what I do on this machine, however you can bet it's not loaded on any others I own!)
I mean no offense to you, and not knowing your personal situation in any detail I can't comment much, but ask yourself this. Before you read that site were you angry at your parents or did you consider your life to be ok? I'm guessing that perhaps you suffer from a physical problem directly and actually caused by your circumcision, if so then I'm sorry that you were so unfortunate. Most likely it may have been due to a botched procedure, and that is unfortunate because the fact is that it can be performed in such a way as to not cause adverse damage. My point in my original post was that given a properly performed medical procedure the main argument of the other site boiled down to men were missing out on more pleasurable sex. As a circumsized-at-birth male I must say that I seem to enjoy sex just fine. The point is some regret of lost potential pleasure is a flimsy argument for further micromanagement of our lives by government. This is a case for education of the masses instead of regulation. People should read about potential downsides like reduced sexual stimulation etc and then make an informed choice, but still be given the choice. Should the government perhaps make regulations to ensure a doctor is well qualified to perform the procedure and therefore would not cause harm by malpractice? Yes, that's legislation I could live with. But to outright ban it because some doctors may perform it poorly when clearly there are many who are perfectly capable of it is ludicrous. Should we ban all plastic surgery because there are some hacks who cause scarring and infections by practicing medicine poorly when other doctors do amazing work? I think not. (I chose plastic surgery over, say heart surgery, to head-off the life-threatening vs cosmetic medical procedure argument.)
As for the emotional trauma arguments, I think that may stem from performing this procedure on a child rather than a newborn/infant. At a point in a child's life where they will have memories and emotional development has already begun then I understand there is likely to be trauma, and I agree that is a poor decision. However that then should be the focus of the ban, not an outright ban. An infant will have no memory of the event, the pain or what their penis was like before the procedure so it seems to me absurd to say that at that age it would cause any more emotional trauma than birth itself or the cutting of the umbilical cord. At best the ban they are proposing is off-target, at worst it attempts to use correlations to further justify government regulation where it is not likely needed.
And remeber, this is in lieu of a call to license becoming a parent for example! If such a medical decision is clearly beyond the scope of a couple's ability to decide and must be chosen for them by the government, why are we not demanding that (planned-on) parenthood itself be government regulated to ensure the would-be parents ARE well educated, have the resources to raise a child, and are caring and will not themselves cause emotional and physical harm through abuse? The fact that this ban was being forwarded by someone who in the same post was advocating less government control and claiming to be a Libertarian was my main offense. Those two positions in this case are inherently incompatible. Again, all due respect to you, but the vast majority of near-birth circumsized males have lived normal healthy lives over the centuries so I don't understand how if it is such a widespread and pressing issue as the site makes it out to be that we do not see it. Surely there are better ways to address the problems that do exist (and I acknowledge that some problems do exist!) than to call on the government to pass a blanket ban. Government properly done requires a light touch, and problems should be addressed directly rather than with a heavy hand that overstreches what is necessary.
You took tiny snippets out of context and consider than an argument. Nice try. And correlation is not causation. You're claiming that your circumcision is the only possible cause of your problems? You even said "I don't know of anything else that traumatic that happened that early in my life." So... maybe something else traumatic happened that you still don't know about? And my point was that the arguments given on the website of the parent poster basically claimed that by their reasoning ALL circumsized men would have those problems. I'm sorry to hear that you do, but their logical fallacy still stands, there are significant percentages of circumsized men who DO NOT suffer from those problems, so how can you claim direct causation?
As for the gone on for centuries argument, you left out my arguments against female circumcision, which has also gone on for centuries, yet I do not support that, or slavery. Why? Because they are inherently harmful pracitces, whereas centuries of (properly performed) male circumcisions have not rendered generation after generation of men useless, traumatized, or other of those problems listed. Given the number of men circumcised and the huge period of time it has been practiced, don't you think society would have already addressed this as the huge problem that the ban-circumcision site makes it out to be? How is it this was never discovered? And btw I am circumsized and I do not have any of those problems, so again, where is the direct correlation that your personal argument implies. Is not my anecdotal evidence just as strong? (hint small sample sizes are useless)
Also I'm confused by your statement:I'm a Jewish man who has suffered from all of those things since I was a small [less than] 1yr baby. When my statement was So according to that site every single jewish man must suffer from one or some of: sexual inadequacy, feelings of powerlessness, emotional states similar to rape victims. Are you seriously telling me that from 1 year of age onward you were sexually inadequate? Do you even know when puberty occurs? Or you felt powerless? I hate to tell you but infants and small children by their nature are essentially powerless. And as to emotional states similar to rape victims, emotional problems can be caused by anything from upbringing abnormalities, to hormonal imbalances, to sexual abuse. Can you prove to me that your feelings were caused by your circumcision and not by perhaps being abused by someone which was never discovered? I do not mean to offend by that statement, nor am I implying that is the case. But you are ignoring many other causes and focusing on only one with little hard evidence (provided in your post) that would back that cause over any other.
Couldn't agree with you more. However allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment. While many technology-focused workplaces, including car companies, and government/military/pharmaceutical companies may have such policies in place, what percentage of the employed population do they really represent? Aren't their headcounts vastly outnumbered by all the restaurants, retial stores, and gas stations that can be found everywhere and don't ban cellphones?
Maybe we shouldn't be saying 1% of companies have this policy, that seems low, but maybe only something like 1% of employees must conform to such a policy. There's big difference between those two statements.
So according to that site every single jewish man must suffer from one or some of: sexual inadequacy, feelings of powerlessness, emotional states similar to rape victims, etc etc due to having been circumsized? What a crock. You're talking out both sides of your mouth and you know it.
You can't claim to be Libertarian and favor less government regulation and then at the same time call for the government to ban a practice that has gone on for centuries, is essentially painless as far as an infant is concerned - sure it may hurt, but guess what, so does traveling down the birth canal, and there's no memory of either event. Did you know the infants head can be streched or compressed during vaginal birth? Good lord we'd better ban natural childbirth too! What a barbarian practice as it also streches and even tears the mother's vagina in many cases, clearly the government should regulate this.
And in addition this represents a religious practice for some people. Now you're going to throw the female circumcision argument out there. Except that that practice is general done to young girls against their will who will have traumatic memories of it, and it will significantly adversely affect the normal function of their sex organ, and can cause sexual intercourse to be a painful event. Whereas men who were circumcised at birth still lead normal healthy lives and still enjoy sex. Your greatest argument here seems to be about loss of some pleasurable stimulation and lubrication enhancement during sex. Seems to be working just fine for most circumsized men as it stands, and a terribly flimsy argument for more government control of people's lives.
Please, choose a better battle, like government overspending that leads to requiring an enormous tax base that causes people to give up choice and economic success by forceful collection of upwards of 50% of their wages through income/sales/land/etc taxes. Or choose any other "do no harm" philosophy cause you may like, but really, what exactly is it you're saving by banning male circumcisions?
Hehehe, I think I like your solution best. Although since a roach body can live for something like 2 weeks before it dies this is probably not the most effective form of murder available to the roach community. Perhaps they will hold a ceremonial squishing?
Cut to scene of roach mob standing next to giant shoe-box propped up and ringed by books, reminiscent of the classic KingKong tribal scene. Roach mob is chanting "Shoe! Shoe! Shoe!" Before the box a lone shaking roach is tied spreadeagle by all his legs to toothbrush pillars, the shoebox lid is slowly drawn open by a bridled centipede to reveal the sole of a large workboot, roaches scream in horror and flee as shoe tips forward and crushes the fated roach 51. [FIN]
I agree with you pretty much 100% and the library model is a very good example of prior art. However this: "the only real difference is that the library isn't charging a monthly fee." isn't really correct. Assuming it is a public library to which you refer it is supported by donations and state/local/national TAXES - which could be considered your monthly "fee" though indirectly taken by force by the government. The only real difference is that (most*) libraries are non-profit.
*most? all? I've never heard of a for-profit library but maybe there is one? In which case it would definitely fit prior art for the netflix patent.
For example, if 50 insects were placed in a dish with three shelters, each with a capacity for 40 bugs, 25 roaches huddled together in the first shelter, 25 gathered in the second shelter, and the third was left vacant.
OK, so now let's do this experiment again, this time with 51 roaches. Will there be 17 in each of the three shelters? What if we reduce shelter capacity to 30 roaches? or 25?
As another poster has suggested this may have less to do with intelligent decisions and more to do with scripted behavior: if roach population here is above X, branch to new location. The threshold X may be set by a number of factors such as total perceived population, observed population in the current shelter, etc. Tweaking shelter size, number of roaches, and other conditions in a controlled way may reveal the decision motivators and help to discern if there is some consensus at work or if it's just a survival script. Just as roaches avoid light because they have evolved to recognize it leaves them detectable and therefore vulnerable, they may scorn large groupings to avoid being wiped out by the loss of a single population center.
Dada, let me start by saying that I respect much of what you have to say, I read your gold blog weekly and have you friended and at +5 on slashdot, but I think in this case you're missing something. As you well know, the idea of an unregulated free market only works when all parties involved have full knowledge in a given transaction, in this case most of the people affected are not aware yet that there is a problem. I would argue that it will in fact be a long time before the public perception of this type of financial data security is widely known enough for the market to react. The newer generations that have grown up with text messaging and the internet will be much more aware, but currently a large percentage of people who transact on the net daily do so only at the most surface level - these are the people who don't know how to set up a firewall or virus protection, who don't know how to secure their PC unless MS pushes out a patch to them automagically, the people who think paypal service is 'like a web debit card' and who fall for phishing scams.
As a Libertarian I would like to see less regulation and smaller government but in cases where the damage being done by the illegal activities is moving faster than the market's ability to protect itself something needs to be done to protect people until they become aware enough to do as you said and only contract with companies that have good protections and privacy policies. The fact that the market is still rather unaware of the problem is evident in the current policies of most web-based and web-enabled financial companies. We don't see the protections we'd like because they're not being demanded. It's fine for you or I to say "well then don't use them" but the fact remains that a huge number of people are unaware and will continue to use them. In essence the market is working currently, customers have not perceived a need and as such they are not demanding a solution so businesses will only do as little as they can get away with. Some of the better ones are enacting customer protections but most don't seem to be. Perhaps what we need in this legislation is a time limit for it (I would like to see more of that in general, and w/o the rubber stamp of indefinite extension after the time limit) and a provision that lays out a campaign for public awareness to educate the consumers so that the market can take care of the problem (use the fines collected, not taxes to pay for this, that way the companies pay to solve the problem they help create). You have to remember that unfortunately those of us in the know in the tech world are vastly outnumbered by people who only know enough about a computer to buy from ebay and only care that what they see on the surface works; security, privacy, and many other important issues that are just buried in tiny legalease click-through EULAs are as invisible to them as the hand of commerce. Once people have caught up to the technology the market can work, but I think until then we need to educate and, for the time being, regulate.
Thank you, you reiterated my points much better than I perhaps laid them down. I didn't come out and directly say it like you did but the lawyer problem was a big part of what I was referring to. If I as an inventor cannot get a decent patent for a reasonable amount of money without having to hire numerous third parties at great expense, then what is the point of the system other than to feed the lawyers' children? If I file a patent I should have some expectation of being able to incur only the patent office costs, I agree that those costs should be high enough to A) cover related expenses inherent in the system, such as making the database searchable and paying examiners for their time, and B) like your parent poster said - keep out the riffraff to a certain extent (i.e. don't waste the patent officers' time by applying for anything you think of without even searching prior art first yourself). But for it to cost me thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in consulting and legal fees just to use the system itself speaks to the problems that have come about through abuse of the system, neglect by the legislature (updating with the times), and purposeful stifling of innovation by the big players who can afford to file thousands of patents to keep the little guy out of the game entirely.
$2500? I'm used to hearing close to $25000 for a decent patent att. to see the thing to completion.
Appologies on the late reply from me because I just moved and my internet has been down. Anyway, yes, I concur, to do it right we're really talking about tens of thousands which I did not address but certainly is one of the (seems to me) absurdly high barriers to entry for a patent. My point in particular was that even a 'DIY' patent attempt will cost as much as $2500 and you really have little chance of being successful in getting a patent for that little. When the minimum amount is that much and failure is still mostly guaranteed we see that the system is starting to exclude people not based on the value of their idea but the size of their wallet. Innovation requires capital to be brought to market, true, but one should still be able to patent an original invention without having to take up a second job to do so.
I've gotta say, I don't really see the innovation yet being stifled. [...] Maybe the fact that people can't 'innovate' tiny little changes to other people's ideas is forcing creativity to higher levels.
This has nothing to do with a lack of creativity or inventiveness on the inventor's part, this has to do with broad and vague patents that cover too much, or too obvious things. In addition the entire patent space is comepltely cluttered with these sorts of things making sorting out relevance from the noise frustrating, time consuming and expensive.
Being an engineer I've had quite a few ideas for new things, one of the biggest problems I have faced is trying to determine if it's even worth applying for a patent or spending time developing it. Unlike a huge corporation my funds are very limited, so I don't have an extra $1,000++ to just take a shot at patenting something that may not even be accepted, or even worse - is accepted but is later found to infringe on someone else's overly broad patent. Have you ever tried to research existing patents to determine if something you've come up with is new? Not only is it time consuming and difficult, the language of the patents makes it nearly impossible to figure out if something applies even when you think you may have found a hit. The solution is to hire a patent company/attorney to do the search for you, but now we're talking easily $150/hr in fees for the service, and on top of that your patent needs to be worded in the same obfuscated legalease to have a chance at actually providing your idea with protection.
Innovation is being stifled by the sharp increase in barriers to entry. I've looked into it and just applying for a patent and including search and support costs it easily costs $2500 on the cheap end. Sure you could just pay the patent office fees and give them what you've come up with on your own but you'd basically be throwing your money away since in all likelyhood you will need some sort of councel to get it through the system.
All of these huge corporations filing "defensive" patents is making it so difficult/expensive that the individual inventor who doesn't already have business funding capital is pretty much out of luck.:(
Does anyone seriously think that this would even be put into cellphones and not horribly crippled by the major providers? Time and again we've seen artifical restrictions put on cellphones in an attempt to charge exorbitant fees for things as simple as moving cameraphone pictures to your computer. We're no longer being nickle-and-dimed to death, now it's a dollar or five at a time. Want to transfer video to your phone for viewing on the train using this new bluetooth high speed feature? No problem, you just need to sign up for our BlueVideo plan at a scant $9.99 per month, and expect download speeds to be about the same as regular bluetooth since we've totally crippled the standard to prevent all you hax0rs from trying to put data you own on the phone you own in the manner of your choosing. And don't forget our soul-sucking DRM for that video format! Why have 15fps when you can get 6fps in twice the memory space?
Everytime the tiered internet concept comes up in an article someone gets a +5 insightful for musing if the ISPs will have to lose their common carrier status. *ISPs* DO NOT HAVE COMMON CARRIER STATUS. They are covered under a different regulation in the Communication Act. From memory I believe it is 117A that covers ISPs.
For some reason the link to Foster-Miller didn't get included in the final post. Here is our public page for http://www.foster-miller.com/lemming.htm Talon Robots with links to some brochures and media. And no, I don't know who named the html page "lemming" or why.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you! Someone who actualy comprehends the words they read. "You're a no-good rice eating chink" - derogatory and racist, unacceptable. "I found the chink in his armor" - NOT related to racist meaning!
There are parts of the country where soda is referred to as 'pop' but that doesn't mean people are asking you for a grandparent or a punch in the jaw when they say "give me a pop". In the same way in my encounters with people saying "that's totally gay" they don't mean "that's totally homosexual" or "I hate that in the same way I hate homosexuals" they in fact mean it as "that's totally stupid/absurd/odd". It is an ALTERNATE SLANG MEANING that has been appropriated by a subset of the culture, just as homosexuals and society re-appropriated the word 'gay' itself about a generation or two ago.
In New England we say 'wicked' to mean 'very', e.g. "The new console is wicked cool". However in this usage it has nothing to do with being evil. In some places in NY people use 'mad' the same way New Englanders use wicked, but they don't mean angry in any way. A word can have two different and unrelated meanings!
To be offended by an alternate use of a word you happen to associate with is silly when it's patently not being used offensively. Could it be used offensively? Has it been? Yes. But this is not one of those examples. And in the case of the word gay itself the argument even becomes hypocrtical since gay already had a different meaning which has been appropriated by today's culture to mean something completely different. Language evolves, and slang is simply a genetic mutation of language, often here today gone tomorrow. If you can't get over that then you're taking yourself way too seriously and need to find a better battle to fight.
Nope, Texas law does not apply here, international law does. And that requires due process as part of the extradition agreement.
I don't disagree with what you said but the fact that a military base was comprimised and didn't alert the local papers is hardly surprising. Beside the fact that most of what goes on in a base and the resources it uses are classified (as in the network configuration is classified, security through obscurity is not a sole defense but can be useful as part of a larger defense plan), I don't think every time they have a security breach it's in their best interests to alert everyone.
Actually I think pretty much everyone agrees that giving them due process in an actual hearing with the ability to enter evidence, review the evidence against them (currently almost all of the "reviews" include secret evidence that cannot be refuted by the accused because they don't know what it is the government is even alleging) and in general be afforded the actual protections outlined for POWs or enemy soldiers under the Geneva conventions WOULD be acceptable. The Geneva conventions define enemy soldiers, POWs and civilian criminals, the "unlawful combatant" term is one which was invented by the US government to do an end-run around the convention and essentially process prisoners however they choose. Lest you forget the US agreed to the Geneva conventions, including the intent that they covered all forms of prisoners captured in wartime. Following the conventions would be acceptable to all.
But you're saving some of us the trouble and we do appreciate it, hence your incredible karma harvest from this thread ;). Your reasoning is sound and it's despicable that the international community lets such flagrant violations of international law and the rules of war by the US go by unchecked. If we're at war, the rules of war apply, if we're not at war then the president cannot assume wartime powers. They want it both ways.
And as for people saying we will process war criminals when the "war ends" or when "Al Queda surrenders" these are laughable concepts (if they weren't so unfunny). The US is waging a War on Terrorism. A concept, a method of fighting. A literal eternal struggle has been set up. And besides the fact that there will always be a group willing to bomb something for their ideals, this administration has been gradually increasing the scope of what they define as terrorism. Very soon now anyone performing an act of a violent nature will be considered a 'terrorist' unless they are doing it in military uniform by a recognized country. Even then I'm willing to bet regimes the US chooses not to recognize politcally will be labeled as terrorist armies, despite being armies of sovereign nations. Uh, well this was meant to be a short reply, sorry for venting to the quire, as it were. Keep up the good posts.
Go read some of my other replies in this thread and take that information in. I fully admit that if someone is performing this procedure on a child rather than an infant or newborn it could indeed have devastating effects emotionally, that is a truly traumatizing experience. So in that case the ban is misguided, ban the procedure from the age of so many months until the age of legal consent. that way it could not be forced on a child who would be emotionally damaged by it. But honestly, to say that a circumcision performed wihtin a few weeks of birth could make you withdrawn your whole life is laughable. Birth itself is more traumatic, and there are plenty of premature babies who spend their first months of life in an incubator which is certainly traumatic, yet they grow up to be normal healthy people. (we're assuming these are not prematurely born because of, for example, a drug-addicted mother, that causes other problems) And there are plenty of non-circumcised people who have been quiet, withdrawn, timid their entire lives. Just because one's emotional development did not occur along the mainstream lines is no reason to tie it to a particular event as proof. And since there is no direct proof (again, we're not talking about this being done to a child when they will have direct memory of it) then your "better safe than sorry" argument for banning it is rubbish. Let's go ahead and ban anything else that may have the possibilty of causing such emotional trauma - it's patently inmpossible! The point here is overregulation when there is no definite need for it. If it's harmless when done properly then set up a system to ensure it's performed properly and give people the choice to continue with the tradition. If evidence comes to light that PROVES it's harmful then ban it. The vast majority of cases over centuries say this is not a harmful procedure when performed at the start of life, so a complete ban is too much. Instead focus the energies on banning the practices which ARE harmful, such as an inexperienced doctor doing it, or doing it to a child older than whatever age (2 or 3 months maybe?) when it very likely would cause some harm. If we petition the government to just outright ban any activity which may cause someone at sometime harm then we have no freedom. Life itself is inherently terminal, and inherently dangerous. And some people are meek because they were born meek, and some people are mentally disbaled because they were born mentally disabled. There is an awful lot of human development and nature vs nuture that is not well understood, but to point to a possible cause of a development problem and say "ban it because that may or may not be it" is just shooting in the dark
Very true, I found one of these today, itnerestingly enough in Flash itself. It indicated there was an update available, and the link to describe the details of the update opened up IE despite FF being my default on this machine. Talk about a security hole, an unsecure app, opening an unsecure broswer, all w/o checking user prefs on the machine or even alerting the user to the action before it is taken. Brilliant! (I know, dump flash you say, but I can't for what I do on this machine, however you can bet it's not loaded on any others I own!)
As for the emotional trauma arguments, I think that may stem from performing this procedure on a child rather than a newborn/infant. At a point in a child's life where they will have memories and emotional development has already begun then I understand there is likely to be trauma, and I agree that is a poor decision. However that then should be the focus of the ban, not an outright ban. An infant will have no memory of the event, the pain or what their penis was like before the procedure so it seems to me absurd to say that at that age it would cause any more emotional trauma than birth itself or the cutting of the umbilical cord. At best the ban they are proposing is off-target, at worst it attempts to use correlations to further justify government regulation where it is not likely needed.
And remeber, this is in lieu of a call to license becoming a parent for example! If such a medical decision is clearly beyond the scope of a couple's ability to decide and must be chosen for them by the government, why are we not demanding that (planned-on) parenthood itself be government regulated to ensure the would-be parents ARE well educated, have the resources to raise a child, and are caring and will not themselves cause emotional and physical harm through abuse? The fact that this ban was being forwarded by someone who in the same post was advocating less government control and claiming to be a Libertarian was my main offense. Those two positions in this case are inherently incompatible. Again, all due respect to you, but the vast majority of near-birth circumsized males have lived normal healthy lives over the centuries so I don't understand how if it is such a widespread and pressing issue as the site makes it out to be that we do not see it. Surely there are better ways to address the problems that do exist (and I acknowledge that some problems do exist!) than to call on the government to pass a blanket ban. Government properly done requires a light touch, and problems should be addressed directly rather than with a heavy hand that overstreches what is necessary.
Regards, ~J
As for the gone on for centuries argument, you left out my arguments against female circumcision, which has also gone on for centuries, yet I do not support that, or slavery. Why? Because they are inherently harmful pracitces, whereas centuries of (properly performed) male circumcisions have not rendered generation after generation of men useless, traumatized, or other of those problems listed. Given the number of men circumcised and the huge period of time it has been practiced, don't you think society would have already addressed this as the huge problem that the ban-circumcision site makes it out to be? How is it this was never discovered? And btw I am circumsized and I do not have any of those problems, so again, where is the direct correlation that your personal argument implies. Is not my anecdotal evidence just as strong? (hint small sample sizes are useless)
Also I'm confused by your statement:I'm a Jewish man who has suffered from all of those things since I was a small [less than] 1yr baby. When my statement was So according to that site every single jewish man must suffer from one or some of: sexual inadequacy, feelings of powerlessness, emotional states similar to rape victims . Are you seriously telling me that from 1 year of age onward you were sexually inadequate? Do you even know when puberty occurs? Or you felt powerless? I hate to tell you but infants and small children by their nature are essentially powerless. And as to emotional states similar to rape victims, emotional problems can be caused by anything from upbringing abnormalities, to hormonal imbalances, to sexual abuse. Can you prove to me that your feelings were caused by your circumcision and not by perhaps being abused by someone which was never discovered? I do not mean to offend by that statement, nor am I implying that is the case. But you are ignoring many other causes and focusing on only one with little hard evidence (provided in your post) that would back that cause over any other.
Couldn't agree with you more. However allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment. While many technology-focused workplaces, including car companies, and government/military/pharmaceutical companies may have such policies in place, what percentage of the employed population do they really represent? Aren't their headcounts vastly outnumbered by all the restaurants, retial stores, and gas stations that can be found everywhere and don't ban cellphones?
Maybe we shouldn't be saying 1% of companies have this policy, that seems low, but maybe only something like 1% of employees must conform to such a policy. There's big difference between those two statements.
You can't claim to be Libertarian and favor less government regulation and then at the same time call for the government to ban a practice that has gone on for centuries, is essentially painless as far as an infant is concerned - sure it may hurt, but guess what, so does traveling down the birth canal, and there's no memory of either event. Did you know the infants head can be streched or compressed during vaginal birth? Good lord we'd better ban natural childbirth too! What a barbarian practice as it also streches and even tears the mother's vagina in many cases, clearly the government should regulate this.
And in addition this represents a religious practice for some people. Now you're going to throw the female circumcision argument out there. Except that that practice is general done to young girls against their will who will have traumatic memories of it, and it will significantly adversely affect the normal function of their sex organ, and can cause sexual intercourse to be a painful event. Whereas men who were circumcised at birth still lead normal healthy lives and still enjoy sex. Your greatest argument here seems to be about loss of some pleasurable stimulation and lubrication enhancement during sex. Seems to be working just fine for most circumsized men as it stands, and a terribly flimsy argument for more government control of people's lives.
Please, choose a better battle, like government overspending that leads to requiring an enormous tax base that causes people to give up choice and economic success by forceful collection of upwards of 50% of their wages through income/sales/land/etc taxes. Or choose any other "do no harm" philosophy cause you may like, but really, what exactly is it you're saving by banning male circumcisions?
Cut to scene of roach mob standing next to giant shoe-box propped up and ringed by books, reminiscent of the classic KingKong tribal scene. Roach mob is chanting "Shoe! Shoe! Shoe!" Before the box a lone shaking roach is tied spreadeagle by all his legs to toothbrush pillars, the shoebox lid is slowly drawn open by a bridled centipede to reveal the sole of a large workboot, roaches scream in horror and flee as shoe tips forward and crushes the fated roach 51. [FIN]
Joe's Apartment eat your heart out!
*most? all? I've never heard of a for-profit library but maybe there is one? In which case it would definitely fit prior art for the netflix patent.
OK, so now let's do this experiment again, this time with 51 roaches. Will there be 17 in each of the three shelters? What if we reduce shelter capacity to 30 roaches? or 25?
As another poster has suggested this may have less to do with intelligent decisions and more to do with scripted behavior: if roach population here is above X, branch to new location. The threshold X may be set by a number of factors such as total perceived population, observed population in the current shelter, etc. Tweaking shelter size, number of roaches, and other conditions in a controlled way may reveal the decision motivators and help to discern if there is some consensus at work or if it's just a survival script. Just as roaches avoid light because they have evolved to recognize it leaves them detectable and therefore vulnerable, they may scorn large groupings to avoid being wiped out by the loss of a single population center.
As a Libertarian I would like to see less regulation and smaller government but in cases where the damage being done by the illegal activities is moving faster than the market's ability to protect itself something needs to be done to protect people until they become aware enough to do as you said and only contract with companies that have good protections and privacy policies. The fact that the market is still rather unaware of the problem is evident in the current policies of most web-based and web-enabled financial companies. We don't see the protections we'd like because they're not being demanded. It's fine for you or I to say "well then don't use them" but the fact remains that a huge number of people are unaware and will continue to use them. In essence the market is working currently, customers have not perceived a need and as such they are not demanding a solution so businesses will only do as little as they can get away with. Some of the better ones are enacting customer protections but most don't seem to be. Perhaps what we need in this legislation is a time limit for it (I would like to see more of that in general, and w/o the rubber stamp of indefinite extension after the time limit) and a provision that lays out a campaign for public awareness to educate the consumers so that the market can take care of the problem (use the fines collected, not taxes to pay for this, that way the companies pay to solve the problem they help create). You have to remember that unfortunately those of us in the know in the tech world are vastly outnumbered by people who only know enough about a computer to buy from ebay and only care that what they see on the surface works; security, privacy, and many other important issues that are just buried in tiny legalease click-through EULAs are as invisible to them as the hand of commerce. Once people have caught up to the technology the market can work, but I think until then we need to educate and, for the time being, regulate.
Thank you, you reiterated my points much better than I perhaps laid them down. I didn't come out and directly say it like you did but the lawyer problem was a big part of what I was referring to. If I as an inventor cannot get a decent patent for a reasonable amount of money without having to hire numerous third parties at great expense, then what is the point of the system other than to feed the lawyers' children? If I file a patent I should have some expectation of being able to incur only the patent office costs, I agree that those costs should be high enough to A) cover related expenses inherent in the system, such as making the database searchable and paying examiners for their time, and B) like your parent poster said - keep out the riffraff to a certain extent (i.e. don't waste the patent officers' time by applying for anything you think of without even searching prior art first yourself). But for it to cost me thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in consulting and legal fees just to use the system itself speaks to the problems that have come about through abuse of the system, neglect by the legislature (updating with the times), and purposeful stifling of innovation by the big players who can afford to file thousands of patents to keep the little guy out of the game entirely.
Appologies on the late reply from me because I just moved and my internet has been down. Anyway, yes, I concur, to do it right we're really talking about tens of thousands which I did not address but certainly is one of the (seems to me) absurdly high barriers to entry for a patent. My point in particular was that even a 'DIY' patent attempt will cost as much as $2500 and you really have little chance of being successful in getting a patent for that little. When the minimum amount is that much and failure is still mostly guaranteed we see that the system is starting to exclude people not based on the value of their idea but the size of their wallet. Innovation requires capital to be brought to market, true, but one should still be able to patent an original invention without having to take up a second job to do so.
Wait a minute, I thought that was the whole reason Robin Hood was considered a folk hero? Damn you and your confusing moral blanket statements!
All sweeping generalizations are false. ;)
This has nothing to do with a lack of creativity or inventiveness on the inventor's part, this has to do with broad and vague patents that cover too much, or too obvious things. In addition the entire patent space is comepltely cluttered with these sorts of things making sorting out relevance from the noise frustrating, time consuming and expensive.
Being an engineer I've had quite a few ideas for new things, one of the biggest problems I have faced is trying to determine if it's even worth applying for a patent or spending time developing it. Unlike a huge corporation my funds are very limited, so I don't have an extra $1,000++ to just take a shot at patenting something that may not even be accepted, or even worse - is accepted but is later found to infringe on someone else's overly broad patent. Have you ever tried to research existing patents to determine if something you've come up with is new? Not only is it time consuming and difficult, the language of the patents makes it nearly impossible to figure out if something applies even when you think you may have found a hit. The solution is to hire a patent company/attorney to do the search for you, but now we're talking easily $150/hr in fees for the service, and on top of that your patent needs to be worded in the same obfuscated legalease to have a chance at actually providing your idea with protection.
Innovation is being stifled by the sharp increase in barriers to entry. I've looked into it and just applying for a patent and including search and support costs it easily costs $2500 on the cheap end. Sure you could just pay the patent office fees and give them what you've come up with on your own but you'd basically be throwing your money away since in all likelyhood you will need some sort of councel to get it through the system.
All of these huge corporations filing "defensive" patents is making it so difficult/expensive that the individual inventor who doesn't already have business funding capital is pretty much out of luck. :(
Mod: +10 scary because it's true.
Does anyone seriously think that this would even be put into cellphones and not horribly crippled by the major providers? Time and again we've seen artifical restrictions put on cellphones in an attempt to charge exorbitant fees for things as simple as moving cameraphone pictures to your computer. We're no longer being nickle-and-dimed to death, now it's a dollar or five at a time. Want to transfer video to your phone for viewing on the train using this new bluetooth high speed feature? No problem, you just need to sign up for our BlueVideo plan at a scant $9.99 per month, and expect download speeds to be about the same as regular bluetooth since we've totally crippled the standard to prevent all you hax0rs from trying to put data you own on the phone you own in the manner of your choosing. And don't forget our soul-sucking DRM for that video format! Why have 15fps when you can get 6fps in twice the memory space?
from dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=flaw
tr. & intr.v. flawed, flawing, flaws:
To make or become defective.
Everytime the tiered internet concept comes up in an article someone gets a +5 insightful for musing if the ISPs will have to lose their common carrier status. *ISPs* DO NOT HAVE COMMON CARRIER STATUS. They are covered under a different regulation in the Communication Act. From memory I believe it is 117A that covers ISPs.
For some reason the link to Foster-Miller didn't get included in the final post. Here is our public page for http://www.foster-miller.com/lemming.htm Talon Robots with links to some brochures and media. And no, I don't know who named the html page "lemming" or why.