This is certainly cogent analysis, however I think you are missing two things in re Iraq. It's all well to say that Saddam "was making it appear that he had WMDs", but the fact that our intelligence community completely failed to pierce this deception stinks to high heavens. Intelligence is difficult but it's not impossible. What really get my hackles twitching is my perception not that we failed so much as that we gave it a very weak effort. Sort of a damned by faint praise situation. In other words, if we *really* wanted to know the truth, we could have. So why didn't we???
While I agree with your sentiment, I'm not sure it was as easy as you might think. We relied a lot on foreign inteligence sources because most all connections to the US would simply turn into a funnel of misinformation or roadblocks for the information. Remember the fiasco surrounding UN weapons inspectors and how many times they were removed from the country or locked down? Saddam was openly hostile to the US and we trusted a lot of our foreign intelligence sources. Perhaps we could have invested more money and effort but you have to realize the assumed need for that wasn't there until after the intelligence turned out to be sour. In other words, we didn't really see the need to get our guys more involved until "after" we found out what we know wasn't what was happening.
The other thing is that its all very smooth sounding and knowledgeable to claim to know all the dirty things Saddam was going to do, or had said he would do, etc., etc. And, sure, if you're going to throw dirt, it's always a good bet to throw it at a hated asshole like Saddam. But I say that looking at the history of Iraq, if I was Saddam, I might well feel pretty damn betrayed by the US, so why shouldn't I talk trash. We did betray him after all! Of course it's not "us" the people of the United States who betrayed him, but the United States Federal Government, a rogue entity that has as about as much to do with us as Kim Jong Il!
Please enlighten me on how we betrayed Saddam. Our support for him in the Iraq-Iran war was at the request of Kuwait and didn't amount to much as Iraq favored Soviet weapons.
Anyways, I wasn't attempting to justify the actions in Iraq, simply separating the two wars from each other and explain why they were connected to 9/11 but not necessarily because of involvement in 9/11.
Personally, I believe we should have gone in Iraq back in 1994-5 when the UN inspectors were first kicked out and they shot at our planes patrolling the no fly zone. I also believe that given the customs in the middle east where if someone is perceived as a pussy, they get disrespected all over the place verses when someone is perceived as strong, less risked are taken to piss them off, that if we wouldn't have presented ourselves as being week in our dealings with Iraq, 9/11 wouldn't have happened. It's interesting that when we captured the number two Al Qeada officer who played a large role in planning and executing 9/11, he said he had no idea that the US would retaliate the way they did. This is also backed up by former associates of Al Qaeda and various other terrorist captured.
You mean the same France who forwarded the fake nuclear report to the US? Or the France who was making secrete oil deals with Iraq that Violated UN Sanctions and stood to lose out on billions if we went to war with Iraq?
By the way, the conditions for victory for the "Iraq war" were to have the oil fields pumping for the profit of someone other than the corrupt iragis at the top of the stack - which has been recently accomplished with the assignment of contracts for a large majority of the larger Iraqi oilfields, Basra in particular.
That is something completely made up in your mind with absolutely no evidence to support it. Where do you think we are, in your preschool class with no access to the internet or anything?
I understand why you posted as anonymouse, I wouldn't want my legitimate reputation attached to a statement like that either.
However, history and the ease of access to it on the internet has proven you wrong on so many levels that I will forgo the trouble of correcting your misinformation.
The problem is the term "WMDs". It is a vague, political term that was introduced on purpose. The idea was to lump together nuclear weapons, which generate lots of fear and concern, with biological and chemical, which aren't in the same class.
Actually, no it wasn't a vague political term introduced on purpose. It may have been turned into that now when dealing with other nations but with concern to Iraq, it originated out of the list of prohibited weapons in the 1991 armistice agreement that brought the UN into jurisdiction. The term weapons of mass destruction was a technical terms that defined all of the prohibited weapons and weapons systems that Iraq agreed to not possess in order to stop the advancement of coalition forces after they invaded Kuwait.
Now I will agree that it has been used as a blank political terms when dealing with other nations who do not/did not have such agreements but with Iraq. For Clinton, Bush, and all of the rhetoric spewed over Iraq between them, allied nations, and their subordinates, it has a very specific and legally binding meaning. That's specifically why dual use items like aluminum tubes that could be used for commercial use or weapons use was considered a WMD.
We KNEW Iraq had chemical weapons because they used them publicly against the Kurds and Iranians. It was common knowledge, and WE DIDN'T CARE. They were little to no threat to the U.S. with those.
And as I said before, before 9/11, we saw things differently, after 9/11 we took a proactive approach instead of waiting until after something happened to point fingers. Let me ask you something, do you think it's not OK to change your mind or be concerned about some things after other events happen? I mean would you be out of line if you let your kids climb a tree in your back yard then forbid them from doing that after one of them falls out and seriously injures himself? The mark of humanity is learning from our past to make life better for us. Not climbing a rotting tree after someone is injured in it is the same as taking notice to Saddam's forbidden WMDs and the possibility of them getting into the hands of terrorists who pushed your kid out of the tree.
In other words, after some events happen, it's perfectly natural to care about shit that didn't bother you before. And it's not like we didn't care at all, the Armistice wouldn't have banned their possesion of the weapons if we didn't care. We just didn't care enough to do much about it.
We KNEW they were working on biological weapons, but again they weren't much of a threat to the U.S. Certainly not enough to justify an invasion. Both chemical and biological have short shelf-lives and are fairly difficult to use effectively except on a battlefield.
See above, I think you are missing most of the history surrounding Iraq. It's convenient for you to do so because once the history is revealed, your argument loses a lot of ground. You are also missing the point where Saddam admitted to making it appear as if he had the WMDs and programs to produce the WMDs specifically because he was afraid that the neighboring countries he didn't treat too well would invade if they thought he was defenseless. So short shelf life or not, it's only an after the fact armchair reaction that can allow you to make those claims. Hans Blix, the UN weapons inspector cheif that claimed after the invasion that Iraq didn't have WMDs certainly presented it completely different in his reports to the UN the months before. Those reports are available if your interested in not remaining ignorant.
Nuclear we had NO credible intelligence that Iraq had any capability. What little we had was suspect, cherry picked, and refuted by several other, more credible sources.
Not really. It wasn't refuted, it was questioned which is completely different. I hope you arne't speaking of the Joe
Just a point of clarification. Afghanistan had the US as a friend before 9/11. We gave them something like 8 million in military aid between '99 and 2001 and we also gave them around 40 million in humanitarian aid due to a drought. That's not to mention the self serving aid given to repel the Russians a decade before. But that's not really the same.
I don't disagree with what you said, just wanted to throw that out there where the US was engaged in friendly relations and aid with Afghanistan before 9/11. BTW, I have never seen the start of WWI boiled down that simple before. Perhaps if the Soviet Union didn't collapse, we would have been in a world war instead when we invaded Afghanistan? Oh well, I'm sure there are loads of different possible scenarios.
Yea, because it's easier to label and kill the messenger then deal with the facts of the message that don't jive with your notion of reality.
Well, I'm going to go get a beer now, I'll toast one in your honor. Hows this sound, "here to the willfully ignorant and the people who want to color their views so much they do not resemble reality any more". Or how about this, "here's to throwing intellectual honesty out the window". Oh well, some friends are meeting me, I'll ask them which would be best to toast you with.
All you have to do is pay attention to the news coverage over the issue and less attention to the talking heads putting out words to suit their agendas. Sure, the link was from an Agenda driven sight, but it's a quote from a NYT article.
I think you might be conflating several things into one and then scratching your head when you can't see the connections.
Umm, Iraq wasn't involved in 9/11 nor was there any credible evidence that Saddam was able to attack us in the US. Perhaps you might explain to the rest of us how that makes us safer. And while you're at it, you might consider explaining how the mission in Afghanistan is protecting us more than the alternative of cruise missiles to training camps would.
First, these are completely separate issues at hand. 9/11 was orchestrated by a group that was gaining safe harbor in Afghanistan. When we demanded the safe harbor to stop, we were told to go take a hike. This is pretty much an official support doctrine of the acts surrounding 9/11 which is why it was more then just training grounds. It meant that the government of Afghanistan was actively supporting Al Qeada and therefore supporting it's actions. In diplomacy, that is almost the same things as sending your military to destroy the twin towers except it carries an element of separation which can be attempted to be used as Plausible deniability to the ignorant. So any actions towards AQ would need to involve changing the leadership of Afghanistan to one that wouldn't sponsor terrorism or terrorist even if they remained unfriendly with the US. You mentioned Vietnam and one of the lessons learned there was how hostile support within the leadership can defeat the most valiant efforts. Another lesson which can be connected was that a defense only strategy doesn't work when it doesn't hit the enemy hard enough. Korea has a few different lessons which would have eventually played in too.
On the other hand, Iraq was in response to 9/11 in a more indirect way. At the time, all of the world believed Iraq had WMDs in defiance of the UN sanctions and armistice agreements that ended the first gulf war. This is pretty much undisputed until after the invasion when it turned out that Saddam was (he admitted it) making it appear that he still had WMDs because he was afraid his neighbors would invade if they saw him as being too week. So the indirect connection is that with a stock pile of WMDs, groups of people wanting to gain access to them to use against the US and it's allies, then his simple defiance had them became a major threat. In case you are still in the dark or purposely ignoring the threat, it was that he would give the weapons to people wanting to harm us or our allies and given the sanctuary that Afghanistan gave AQ which enabled and promoted their efforts for 9/11, allowing what we thought we knew to exist would result in another 9/11 to either US or our allies except with WMDs instead of jet airliners. Saddam has already at this time promised the families of Hammas suicide bombers a pension of $15 or $25k US after they blew themselves up. So it was not a stretch at all to believe he would aid them in other ways.
So it wasn't because Iraq had a part in 9/11, it was because after 9/11, we saw what doing nothing lead to. And yes, we had already been in diplomatic relations with Afghanistan before 9/11 to the tun of several billion dollars a year in aid and they still supported AQ before and after 9/11.
What we have done is dedicated a huge amount of resources to nebulous goals in parts of the world of little strategic value, without defining the victory conditions or making credible back up plans for the instance where we need to engage in combat elsewhere in the world. There may be something I'm missing here, but Sun Tzu was right on when he indicated that fighting wars far away for prolonged periods is a serious indicator of failure.
You cannot apply the art of war here in a literal sense. The problem is that the type of war is not expected to be won quickly in the first place. And yes, victory conditions have been defined, you simply do not want to accept them. The conditions are (for Iraq) when the Iraqi government is elected
Good sentiment and nice liberal touch but sadly your accounting doesn't favor reality.
Faisal Shahzad said his reasons for attempting the bombing was because of slew of deaths among leaders of the terror group ehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. So it isn't the deaths of innocent civilians that took him to evil, it was the deaths of leaders mixed in with the evil that brainwashed him in the first place.
Whether or not this was sparked by a bombardment of images of the enemy dieing is sort of a moot point. In any war, there will be enemies and there will be enemies dieing. The only difference between this and letting them mind their own way is that they would be showing images of us dieing instead of them dieing. Call me conservative or one of those right wing nut jobs, but allowing them to kill us instead of us killing them is simply not acceptable. Allowing them to harbor and promote those not only wanting to but actually killing our citizens is simply not acceptable. Now, I understand that doesn't jibe with the liberal mindset but I'm not sure all that many people care. We cannot all just get along when they do not want to in the first place.
Simply create a cost plus fee structure to where the filing fees are the same and if it takes the examiner longer then (some arbitrary number) 340 minutes of work logged onto the application, a costs assessment is added to the fees for time in excess of that amount which would be justified by logs and expense reports. All of the recording and reporting can be done in software that's pretty much off the shelf for the legal profession. I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't already being done internally with the USPTO to justify labor expenses.
There won't be a backlog if the time of the examiners were being paid for because you could hire and train more examiners. If it's a simple patent that can be approved or denied in a short time, normal fees apply, if it's more complicated or connected with 2000 other patents, then the time needed to process it will be covered by the applicant who stands to benefit much more then the costs of one extra employee for a week or two.
The wait time between charging the costs plus and the normal fee wouldn't be that important because the normal fee already assume a certain amount of time associated with it. You would only need to cover the excessive that causes the backlog. And if twice as many applications are being processed due to a costs plus fee like that, then the normal fees will double in gross receipts so the USPTO doesn't really lose out. Then, after they are caught up, all they need to do is manage their labor like any other business does, hire more when the need is there and lay some off when it isn't.
You could also use clerical staff form the military who tend to serve 4 to 6 years and make the patent examination part of their occupational training. Then when a backlog increases again, simply lease a few staffers from the Army, navy or whatever branch of the military for short terms and the problem is solved.
The point and problem isn't the raw data itself. It's the modifications and justifications made to the raw data that's primarily important that's also lost. The raw data contains information that wasn't used as well as information that was, the notes contained justifications for using or not using or adjustments to those data points and so on.
You see, years and years of research is built off of these manipulations or normalizations and other studies are based off the fruits of this manipulation. You can't take the raw data and recreate the science without the justifications for the manipulations. Have you ever heard the saying "garbage in garbage out"? Well, it goes here too. If they were wrong on that initial data manipulation, then everything built from it could very well be wrong too. You can take the raw data and never see the same results and with those varying results, come up with completely different conclusions in works built from that.
Here is a small and very simplified example, suppose we start with 1 and add multiples of.10 in progression. The raw data would lead you to believe that it would go something like 1.0, 1.10, 1.20, 1.30 and so on. But when the data gets manipulated (legitimately or incorrectly), we could get.95, 1.05, 1.15, 1.25, and so on. Now someone builds from that data, and they manipulate it because of the heat island effect, and they build it into.90, 1.1, 1.20, 1.3 and so on. But what if the heat island effect has already been accounted for on half of the data from the first compilation, then to be correct, we might need something like.95, 1.05, 1.2, 1.3 to be accurate. Notice how the gap between the second and third value is different then the.10 value? However, without the methods and justifications, you have no clue that the first half of the data is wrong and reprocessing the raw data without the methodology will not produce comparable or compatible results.
So anyone with sufficient interest is pretty much screwed at this point- even though the raw data or portions there of can be found.
There is probably going to be some sort of code injected into the video that will allow detection of which subscriber recorded the video. It wouldn't be all that hard to do either. Simply having a cut scene where a different brand of drink is used or some labeling being different can be done to track down which geographical region the PPV happened in, using something like the display on a clock can show the time and date it was shown and one or two other things could narrow it down to a specific vendor. Or they could just inject a few artifacts into the video that would contain all the important information as well.
All that can be done by computer when the video is streamed to the user. It can be documented and stored. It wouldn't surprise me if it's not already able to be done and they aren't jumping on it in order to catch the major distributors.
Of course what can be done by the MPAA can also be undone by the user with another computer depending on how much detail they want to get into. Something as simple as cutting several copies together into one full length feature could pretty much inject so much uncertainty to make enforcement near impossible.
I'm suggesting this so you don't run out and be the first ones to discover it. Look for this crap before doing it- even if your not the one I'm replying to.
And with all due respect, considering the gravity of this matter, skeptics are a bit unwise to require this incontestable proof to be served on a silver plate in front of them. This kind of attitude that "if someone doesn't convince me, then it isn't true" is a bit dangerous.
If AGW is happening, you should be asking for completely revised infrastructures and policies, for you own sake. It is your responsibility and in your own interest to find out what the truth of this matter is. Skeptics shouldn't expect others to do this work for them.
With all due respect, how am I or anyone else supposed to know something happening unless someone convinces me it's happening? There can't be an if, unless there is an is. So if I tell you that this car was owned by a little old lady that stored it in a garage and only drove it to church on Sundays, are you going to believe me that it's a sound car or are you going to check into it more?
What I'm getting at is that there are so many people out there attempting to con us out of our money. With the global warming debate, we saw a backlash against high taxes and out of control government spending which saw a political change in power in the US for almost over a decade. Now, the global warming people are saying that increasing taxes and government spending is the only way to deal with this gloom and doom that is global warming. So convince me or your not getting my credit card information. And saying that I shouldn't be questioning you or whoever (the you is a figure of speech, not you specifically) but doing what you say is somewhat the mark of a goof con to begin with. I mean this is evident with almost every scam from loans to pressuring the elderly into paying for home repairs that won't be completed to scamming someone out of their life savings.
What you basically saying is ignore everything you have built up to guard against fraud and do what those that might defraud you want.
Maybe we live in different parts of the world, but I don't share your view of how skepticism has been dealt with. On the contrary, I find it commendable how some find the effort to continue arguing with, usually misinformed, deniers. But there comes a point when the discussion needs to be settled, because it could truly go on forever, or there will be no time left to act.
I'm not sure that the level of skepticism has been dealt with as admirably as you present. Data sets have been destroyed, lost, or otherwise withheld from people simply wanting to verify the results, scientists have conspired to make that happen, admitted to exaggerating the details because the ends justify the means and so on. Many of the skeptics questions like how water vapor or solar activity plays into the mix have been flat out rejected until eventually incorporated into models that still aren't reliably accurate. Perhaps if you're already a member of the quire, the preaching is enough to keep you convinced, however, many people aren't and they want some answers. Claiming that anyone prominent to get attention to the questions is somehow connected to big oil or a republican or something else that doesn't answer the question simply isn't enough.
AGW (whatever that stands for, I don't know) were wrong
AGW=Anthropogenic Global Warming. Basically, it's the warming caused by man or thought to be caused by man. It's a pretty important distinction between global warming because it implicitly injects man as a fault in which it claims man has to change it's behavior.
No, you don't. If you did, you'd already know that the CO2 levels are rising (measurable, and an indisputable empirical fact), that CO2 absorbs more energy from infrared light than most other atmospheric gasses (also a verified fact) and that the CO2 almost certainly comes from the burning of fossil fuels (the C12 ratio is higher, due to fossil carbon lacking C14), and you'd accept that there is a warming trend, and that the warmest decade on record has occurred at a solar minimum.
There's absolutely nothing to this that resembles the "supernatural".
Actually, he does.. and he isn't ignoring anything either.
You see, none of what you mentioned proved AGW, none of what you mentioned proves the earth will get warmer or cooler or anything that's being claimed by AGW. Those are known facts but as often is the case, what works in theory doesn't always work in practice. If it did, then they wouldn't be adjusting the data to make the models work and they wouldn't be adjusting the models to get them somewhat historically accurate but never predictably accurate. Let's put it another way, Co2- which is less then.000350 or so of the atmosphere and of which, only.000100 or so is being claimed to be a problem and somehow that 100 or so parts per million is going to have a different effect than the first 60% of it.
The bottom line is that we do not understand the science behind the climate well enough to makes claims like that. There is a big difference between likely being a certain way and actually being a certain way. As of now, just like with evolution and the big bang, it's only been shown to be likely, not certain that it's a certain way. And if you can't tell the difference between fact and evidence to support a theory, you should clearly state your political affiliation and stop pretending to be of a scientific mindset.
"Hidden data"? You have a wealth of open data to examine. Which algorithms are hidden? Have you even been looking? No? You're just making stuff up, or copypasting from unverified claims -- all the while pretending that your own faults are the faults of science.
This is so one sided it is laughable. UEA fought well and hard to remove their data sets from public scrutiny- So much that the UK finally passed a law mandating they hand it over after their "let hide everything" emails became public. Hansen and Mann have taken it so far that they do not even have the formulas for the original manipulations/normalizations to the original data sets. And seeing how you are on slashdot, I'm sure you have heard the saying Garbage in Garbage out, how in the hell can you question someone wanting to know if this isn't the case when a lot of the data sets available are manipulations based on forgotten techniques purposely hidden by their creators? No, burying you head in the sand does not make the things you do not like disappear thereby allowing you to falsely shift blame to others. If you are indeed that ignorant of the surrounding controversy, then I suggest you start looking into it by looking at James Hansen's interview where he said exaggerating the effects of climate change was perfectly fine because the ends justify the means. And no, that's not an exact quote, but it's a reasonable take on his statement.
I'll say this: you're not scientifically inclined at all. Otherwise, your arguments would probably have been with a slight scientifically orientation. There is none.
I'll say this, you are the pot calling the kettle black. I started off replying to you to simply show you that theory does not make a fact but facts can make a theory. Then after reading how ignorant you seem to be about the subjects at hand including the concerns of skeptics, you started making me mad. You seriously have no room to scold anyone about anything based on the tripe you just rambled off. Correlation does not mean cau
It would be nice if I could have my turn at the jukebox and not get my face caved in, but that's not really so big of a problem that we need special laws.
But you see, there are already special laws on the books for that. You do not need to invent new ones to deal with it regardless of how often it happens or not. All you need to do is increase the penalty and enforce it if it isn't enough of a deterrent. And this doesn't matter if you're gay, straight, bi, try, a Mozart lover, or whatever, if you're getting assaulted and it's unacceptable, then enforce the existing laws and perhaps increase the penalties. There is no need to special laws to give people special privileges.
That's a kind of hate. A low-key in-passing sort of stereotyping. Now, since most slashdotters wouldn't bother with that sort of comment the SIZE of the problem is small. And since it's a just a joke on the internet, the SCOPE is minimal. So there is no need for hate-crime law protecting hicks. IF something crazy happened and the pope declared a christian crusade on science, and that all get settled down, but there remained a LARGE and PERVASIVE unreasonable hatred against christians, then they could qualify for needing special protection.
Hate isn't the problem, acting on that hate in illegal ways is. Still no need to create special laws because it's already illegal. Enforce the existing laws, increase the penalties, but there is absolutely no need to create a special law that protects a small portion of the population more then others.
I'd agree that the the unreasonable hatred against the gays is not of the same SIZE AND SCOPE that the American blacks faced circa 1900. More blacks (percentage and absolute) faced a harsher environment then gays in America do today. No argument.
It's not just the size and scope, it's the core of the point the hate is directed at. Gays experience hate over their actions, Blacks experience hate over simply being alive because their skin isn't the right color. You can change your actions and behavior, you can't change the color of your skin (even though people have tried). There is simply no equivalence between the two situations.
I put that question forth because, well, I can see the fucking future and knew you'd hate the concept of hate-crimes. SO, baby-steps here, we're establishing the need for hate-crime laws. You're an enlightened northern law-maker and they keep ignoring the laws and lynching blacks down in the south. What do you do to fix it? This is entirely tangent from gays. And this is WAY off topic from the AG. But against culturally imbued unreasonable hatred against a minority that is causing systematic problems, what do you do?
Here is the problem with hate crime laws. I can kill a black man and face life in prison and possibly the death penalty, I can call him a nigger when doing it and get the same punishment except now I get a stronger lecture when they hand it down- "We are really mad at you instead of just mad at you". I can beat up a black man and get in the same amount of trouble if I beat up a white guy or a gay guy. Are you with me? Well, suppose the assault is a first degree misdemeanor and carries a max sentence of 6 months and a $1000 fine. That's the way it is in my neck of the woods. Now suppose there is hate crime legislation and if I yell nigger or queer when I'm beating them up, It's a 4th degree felony and I face a maximum of 1 year in prison and $10,000 fine. So now I can take the misdemeanor by assaulting the two people by not calling them nigger or queer, they are just as assaulted are they not? Do you see how pointless the hate crime legislation is? The black man or the gay man still got assaulted for being queer or black, but I just didn't tell them. So if the penalty for assault was increased to a 4th degree felony, there would be no way I could get around th
It's trying to do nothing but make the ISP honest in it's marketing so consumers can get what they paid for or choose another provider- Nothing else, nothing more.
It's not semantics at all, I think your either reading your own fears and inhibitions into it or not paying attention to the language at all. And no, your point doesn't cover my post unless you think it is perfectly acceptable for someone to offer one thing and takes steps to deny those offerings after you have purchased it. In that case, I would venture to say that your opinion is unimportant in this discussion.
When the industry is an oligopoly, then the reason is more money.
All oil "in" the US is controlled to some extent by 5 different oil companies of which no more then 4 operate in any one state at a time. This is because they own all the refineries and the environmentalist will not let anyone build new ones without billions being spend on court battles and decades of being tied up in courts.
Anyways, BP wouldn't have to collude to fix oil prices. They would just enter the hedge markets as an interest bearing investment to store recovery and cleanup funds and drive the prices up by the creating an artificial demand on oil futures. This would increase the costs of crude for all of the companies but it would stop BP from taking a loss because it would be spread out to others in the market which end up costing you at the pump. Exxon and others would simply look at it as a win-win as they would make the same amount of extra profit.
BTW, don't doubt me on this. The entire hedge situation with oil is part of what lead up to the financial collapse. But more importantly, if you remember, we went from 4 to 5 dollar a gallon fuel to almost 2 dollar a gallon fuel at the pump almost over night when wall street crashed. Demand hadn't changes, production hadn't changed, what changed was the amount of money floating around in the futures.
Because no one randomly kicks the shit out of your just for drinking a few beers on the weekend. It's the size and scope of the hate against gays which causes people to talk about it like they're hate-crimes.
People randomly kick the shit out of others for no reason at all, all the time. And yes, at a few bars I hang in, it can be over drinking a few girls or screwing some girl. I broke a fight up just 2 weeks ago over someone wanting to kick the hell out of their girlfriend's ex from 3 years previously. I saw someone get their ass kicked for playing dance music instead of country. It happens to all sorts of people and gays do not have some monopoly on it. It's either some inane grudge someone has or it's over behavior that someone finds offensive. Believe it or not, acting gay does offend some people. But as we all know, you can choose to be a flamer or not.
You can probably come up with a few fringe examples of people performing pseudo-hate-crimes against people that drink alcohol, or strippers, or the dutch. But such occurrences don't appear to be a perpetuating culture of hate.
First of all, I don't believe there should be such terms as hate crimes. It's either a criminal act or it isn't. If people are still assaulting others, it shouldn't matter why, the penalties should be increased until it's a deterrent. I do not see why a gay person should have more legal protection from assaults or other criminal activities then a straight person or a women or a man or whatever. I do not see why a politician should have more protections then a regular person unless the assault is over them doing their jobs, and I don't believe it's ok to have gay on gay assaults or black on black assaults be less of an offense then black on white, white on black, hetero on homo or vice versa. Almost every nerd or geek got picked on in high school, should they deserve a special protection class too?
the entire idea of hate crimes is little more then special rights compared to others. It does nothing more then illustrate my point.
BTW, I have never assaulted someone that I didn't hate at the moment. There were various reasons behind the hate, but it all boiled down to hate of some sort or defending myself which turns quickly into hating the attacker. Most people who are honest with themselves will see the hate as the same.
Here's a question though; After slavery ended, and the rich and powerful white men held a big grudge against the black men, and there was obvious persecution, and to such an extent that you couldn't trust the local government, what would you suggest to fix the problem?
That's just nonsense. Gays are not in the same struggles as blacks were. You can't seriously sit there and tell me that you are equating something someone was born with and has little to no chance of changing with something that is a choice. And yes, even though some people think that gays are genetic mutants who were born that way (I don't happen to agree), ho they act on that is a choice just the same as it is a choice for a woman to sleep with a man or whatever. It's the behavior that people find offensive and behavior can change or be concealed. With the blacks, they would have had to change their skin color which is next to impossible even in today's world of medicine.
Gays do not share the same plight blacks have had, blacks wanted to live, gays want to live a certain way. It's not the same and I'm offended that you somehow think it is. It does nothing but cheapen what people suffered through just because of the way they looked and had no choice to change it. There would be a lot less gay bashing if they didn't get into everyone's face and do the equivalent of a white man strapping a sign on that says "I hate you niggers" and parading through the middle of Harlem at midnight. For the gays that get beat up who do not do that, join the club because it happens to a lot of different people depending on where they hang out at.
Actually, I think you are. You said that a particular scenario when I used the scenario as illustrative and not definite, was "extremely contrived and strained next to the scenario where they share in the guilt". In my scenario, a number of different things could have happened to which they would share guilt but not be criminally liable/guilty. You seemed to get lost on the entire separation between the two. You can be guilty of destroying someone's property and not be guilty of breaking any laws. I never intended for the situation to be construed as all the girls were innocent or guiltless, in which you attempted to portray which is why I made the statement that you got lost. I even purposed a scenario where their involvement was so shaky as for a prosecution that it was more valuable for them to testify against the boys instead which is what happened.
The girls could have been complicit and guilty of the act. The question is if there was enough evidence to prosecute them or not or if their involvement lacked a provable Mens rea.
Telling a company you must treat all content the same is no different than saying this food product must have X amount of Y. When I said there is only one type of regulation, I was using the modern definition of regulation. But in fact the classical definition, the one used in the Constitution for instance, would be worded today as "well-regulated" e.g. maintained well and functionally. ISPs have every right to regulate their networks in this manner as they please (within the context of IP networking, by dropping packets, routing rules, prioritizing packets, linking with other individuals like households and other ISPs and who or who not to link with, etc). All individuals (including companies) need to regulate how they use their resources, this is necessary to keep costs down (monetary costs or otherwise). You are claiming that the government must use violent regulation to tell companies how to best keep their resources they own well-regulated. This claim makes no sense:
Read what I wrote again and this time, strap your knees to the chair to avoid the jerking motion. I _did_not_say ISPs have to treat all data the same, I said they had to unless they clearly and plainly disclosed their intent not to treat it the same in all their advertisements and contracts with their consumers. What this means is that they can manipulate the data all they want as long as they do not slow the speeds or alter the traffic to below what was promised to their customer with their advertising and contracts with them unless the network is under attack or damaged. In comparison with your food product, it's the same as saying you have to list the ingredients on the wrapper so the consumer can inspect that before purchasing the item.
Only the consumer is able to say what is best for them, and only the ISP is able to say what is best for them, and if they both happen to agree that you want what the other has to offer is more valuable than what you are giving up, and perform a voluntary exchange. No where in this process is any 3rd party involved, and it follows no 3rd party has any legitimate ability to change the transaction terms. You are not in a position to tell other interested parties what they may or may not exchange.
As I said before, this isn't telling anyone what is best for them, it's saying that you should get what you paid for period. I know when your knee is jerking, that's hard to see but the entire language about plainly and clearly and obvious was the part that alluded to it. Strap your knees down again so you fulling understand this part- In this case, if an ISP advertises something and a consumer purchases it, then both of them have already decided what was best for them. If the ISP secretly and purposely acts to change that because they over sold their network space or because they think they can ransom some website by denying the communications their customer requested and expected to receive due to the ISP's advertising or implied contract terms, then the consumer is entitled to damages.
There is no one "in charge of the Internet," it is the foremost free institution in the world, each individual has a say over their infrastructure they control, and no one may control any one else's. Net neutrality breaks the tradition of network freedom that the Internet has historically operated under, and tells people how they must exchange with each other in order to do so lawfully: you must treat content a certain way. This breaks the tradition of using engineering to solve problems and not a threat of violence. It's like declaring spam illegal with the can-spam act, it's pointless and something better solved with the right engineering, not government power.
Not in the terms I put the purposed law in. Nothing breaks except the ability of ISP's or service providers to claim one thing in public while secretly doing another.
Read what I wrote again, take it slow this time and lose this misconception that it's placing restrictions all over the place. If the ISP isn't prepared to conform to it, they simply do not offer services that they cannot provide. It's that simple- nothing more or less.
Living in the UK, I find it fascinating that in the US it is viewed in this way. What seems to be the view of general populace in the UK, is that it's a Government/EU conspiracy designed to ensure citizen compliance, and the ability to raise taxes for essentially no real reason.
That's essentially the same argument passed around in the US by conservatives. It's to allow the liberals to tax more and sneak in programs that we don't agree with. This premise originated back in the late 1980's and early 1990's when the UN instituted the IPCC and work on the Kyoto treaty started. Back around this time, there was a push for the first world nations to forgive the third world debt incurred during the oil crisis in the 1970's when they borrowed money to explore for oil to aid in out oil crunch. Once oil dropped in price, these third world countries found it difficult to repay their loans.
Anyways, this push all the sudden disappeared in the early 90's and a semi secrete treaty was announced pertaining to global warming. In this treaty was a mechanism that made the third world countries profitable again by artificially inflating the value of energy that could be surpassed by investments in the same third world countries. This is commonly refereed to in modern terms as cap and trade. A lot of speculation has occurred over why only 37 or so countries that signed on to Kyoto were actually limited and if the benefit of potential foreign investment wasn't present, if the other 120 some odd countries would have signed on to it.
It seems to be very much a People vs Government and Big Business issue here, rather than rich billionaires trying to subvert it -- they seem to be part of the problem, as much as Government of any color.
The rich verses poor is actually a hold over of a political technique that has netted the left in America some overwhelming support. It generally started when Unions were demanding things that weren't traditionally given to employees and the battle cry was something along the lines of the rich keeping their money while the workers struggled to pay their bills. This eventually morphed into the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. At one time, the republicans believed that government should get out of the way of the people and let them determine their own wealth. This of course led to the rich getting richer because as more wealth was created, they had a hand in that creation. So not the tired old battle cry of the democrats seems to be that the republicans are for the rich and they are for the poor. Of course who is rich and poor is a double standard once they get elected.
Personally, I think there is so much mud-slinging and propaganda by both the warmists and deniers, that having everything in the open, and as much legal scrutiny as possible at this point is absolutely essential.
I strongly suspect the truth to lie somewhere in between what warmists and deniers have been shouting at us for the past decade or so. We are never going to get to the truth by listening to either of these cabals without close scrutiny. The whole subject is tarnished, and from here on in, it needs to be much more transparent if any respect is to be given to anyone with a pro or con view on AGW.
Ditto.. In case being from the UK, you do not understand what I mean by Ditto, It's basically I couldn't have said it better myself.
Explain the rational basis for firing someone for something that is completely unrelated to their job performance in any way, shape, or form.
Here is the problem. And this problem is a key to why people think gay rights are "special" rights and do not think entitlements should be created for them.
If it's wrong to fire someone for something completely not related to their job performance, then why should only gays be protected? Why shouldn't everyone be protected? So if someone does something on their own time, outside of company property, that doesn't effect their ability to do the job at all, nor does it put the company in a bad light with their customers, then why is it only gays who should be protected from termination and not you who goes hunting on the weekends or drinks a few beers with friends, or hooked up with 3 college girls- one of them happening to be a stripper, or you who campaigned for and supported some political entity that the boss doesn't agree with?
The problem here seems to be that gays want something special for themselves. They want to be able to visit sick loved ones in the hospital yet other unmarried people cannot do it just the same, they want protections from being fired for activities outside the workplace, yet others will still be able to be fired. It simply comes off to many, many people as special rights, not human rights.
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While I agree with your sentiment, I'm not sure it was as easy as you might think. We relied a lot on foreign inteligence sources because most all connections to the US would simply turn into a funnel of misinformation or roadblocks for the information. Remember the fiasco surrounding UN weapons inspectors and how many times they were removed from the country or locked down? Saddam was openly hostile to the US and we trusted a lot of our foreign intelligence sources. Perhaps we could have invested more money and effort but you have to realize the assumed need for that wasn't there until after the intelligence turned out to be sour. In other words, we didn't really see the need to get our guys more involved until "after" we found out what we know wasn't what was happening.
Please enlighten me on how we betrayed Saddam. Our support for him in the Iraq-Iran war was at the request of Kuwait and didn't amount to much as Iraq favored Soviet weapons.
Anyways, I wasn't attempting to justify the actions in Iraq, simply separating the two wars from each other and explain why they were connected to 9/11 but not necessarily because of involvement in 9/11.
Personally, I believe we should have gone in Iraq back in 1994-5 when the UN inspectors were first kicked out and they shot at our planes patrolling the no fly zone. I also believe that given the customs in the middle east where if someone is perceived as a pussy, they get disrespected all over the place verses when someone is perceived as strong, less risked are taken to piss them off, that if we wouldn't have presented ourselves as being week in our dealings with Iraq, 9/11 wouldn't have happened. It's interesting that when we captured the number two Al Qeada officer who played a large role in planning and executing 9/11, he said he had no idea that the US would retaliate the way they did. This is also backed up by former associates of Al Qaeda and various other terrorist captured.
You mean the same France who forwarded the fake nuclear report to the US? Or the France who was making secrete oil deals with Iraq that Violated UN Sanctions and stood to lose out on billions if we went to war with Iraq?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/11/AR2005101101384.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil-for-Food_Programme#Criminal_investigation_in_France
That is something completely made up in your mind with absolutely no evidence to support it. Where do you think we are, in your preschool class with no access to the internet or anything?
I understand why you posted as anonymouse, I wouldn't want my legitimate reputation attached to a statement like that either.
However, history and the ease of access to it on the internet has proven you wrong on so many levels that I will forgo the trouble of correcting your misinformation.
Actually, no it wasn't a vague political term introduced on purpose. It may have been turned into that now when dealing with other nations but with concern to Iraq, it originated out of the list of prohibited weapons in the 1991 armistice agreement that brought the UN into jurisdiction. The term weapons of mass destruction was a technical terms that defined all of the prohibited weapons and weapons systems that Iraq agreed to not possess in order to stop the advancement of coalition forces after they invaded Kuwait.
Now I will agree that it has been used as a blank political terms when dealing with other nations who do not/did not have such agreements but with Iraq. For Clinton, Bush, and all of the rhetoric spewed over Iraq between them, allied nations, and their subordinates, it has a very specific and legally binding meaning. That's specifically why dual use items like aluminum tubes that could be used for commercial use or weapons use was considered a WMD.
And as I said before, before 9/11, we saw things differently, after 9/11 we took a proactive approach instead of waiting until after something happened to point fingers. Let me ask you something, do you think it's not OK to change your mind or be concerned about some things after other events happen? I mean would you be out of line if you let your kids climb a tree in your back yard then forbid them from doing that after one of them falls out and seriously injures himself? The mark of humanity is learning from our past to make life better for us. Not climbing a rotting tree after someone is injured in it is the same as taking notice to Saddam's forbidden WMDs and the possibility of them getting into the hands of terrorists who pushed your kid out of the tree.
In other words, after some events happen, it's perfectly natural to care about shit that didn't bother you before.
And it's not like we didn't care at all, the Armistice wouldn't have banned their possesion of the weapons if we didn't care. We just didn't care enough to do much about it.
See above, I think you are missing most of the history surrounding Iraq. It's convenient for you to do so because once the history is revealed, your argument loses a lot of ground. You are also missing the point where Saddam admitted to making it appear as if he had the WMDs and programs to produce the WMDs specifically because he was afraid that the neighboring countries he didn't treat too well would invade if they thought he was defenseless. So short shelf life or not, it's only an after the fact armchair reaction that can allow you to make those claims. Hans Blix, the UN weapons inspector cheif that claimed after the invasion that Iraq didn't have WMDs certainly presented it completely different in his reports to the UN the months before. Those reports are available if your interested in not remaining ignorant.
Not really. It wasn't refuted, it was questioned which is completely different. I hope you arne't speaking of the Joe
Just a point of clarification. Afghanistan had the US as a friend before 9/11. We gave them something like 8 million in military aid between '99 and 2001 and we also gave them around 40 million in humanitarian aid due to a drought. That's not to mention the self serving aid given to repel the Russians a decade before. But that's not really the same.
I don't disagree with what you said, just wanted to throw that out there where the US was engaged in friendly relations and aid with Afghanistan before 9/11. BTW, I have never seen the start of WWI boiled down that simple before. Perhaps if the Soviet Union didn't collapse, we would have been in a world war instead when we invaded Afghanistan? Oh well, I'm sure there are loads of different possible scenarios.
Yea, because it's easier to label and kill the messenger then deal with the facts of the message that don't jive with your notion of reality.
Well, I'm going to go get a beer now, I'll toast one in your honor. Hows this sound, "here to the willfully ignorant and the people who want to color their views so much they do not resemble reality any more". Or how about this, "here's to throwing intellectual honesty out the window". Oh well, some friends are meeting me, I'll ask them which would be best to toast you with.
I didn't need to.
All you have to do is pay attention to the news coverage over the issue and less attention to the talking heads putting out words to suit their agendas. Sure, the link was from an Agenda driven sight, but it's a quote from a NYT article.
I think you might be conflating several things into one and then scratching your head when you can't see the connections.
First, these are completely separate issues at hand. 9/11 was orchestrated by a group that was gaining safe harbor in Afghanistan. When we demanded the safe harbor to stop, we were told to go take a hike. This is pretty much an official support doctrine of the acts surrounding 9/11 which is why it was more then just training grounds. It meant that the government of Afghanistan was actively supporting Al Qeada and therefore supporting it's actions. In diplomacy, that is almost the same things as sending your military to destroy the twin towers except it carries an element of separation which can be attempted to be used as Plausible deniability to the ignorant. So any actions towards AQ would need to involve changing the leadership of Afghanistan to one that wouldn't sponsor terrorism or terrorist even if they remained unfriendly with the US. You mentioned Vietnam and one of the lessons learned there was how hostile support within the leadership can defeat the most valiant efforts. Another lesson which can be connected was that a defense only strategy doesn't work when it doesn't hit the enemy hard enough. Korea has a few different lessons which would have eventually played in too.
On the other hand, Iraq was in response to 9/11 in a more indirect way. At the time, all of the world believed Iraq had WMDs in defiance of the UN sanctions and armistice agreements that ended the first gulf war. This is pretty much undisputed until after the invasion when it turned out that Saddam was (he admitted it) making it appear that he still had WMDs because he was afraid his neighbors would invade if they saw him as being too week. So the indirect connection is that with a stock pile of WMDs, groups of people wanting to gain access to them to use against the US and it's allies, then his simple defiance had them became a major threat. In case you are still in the dark or purposely ignoring the threat, it was that he would give the weapons to people wanting to harm us or our allies and given the sanctuary that Afghanistan gave AQ which enabled and promoted their efforts for 9/11, allowing what we thought we knew to exist would result in another 9/11 to either US or our allies except with WMDs instead of jet airliners. Saddam has already at this time promised the families of Hammas suicide bombers a pension of $15 or $25k US after they blew themselves up. So it was not a stretch at all to believe he would aid them in other ways.
So it wasn't because Iraq had a part in 9/11, it was because after 9/11, we saw what doing nothing lead to. And yes, we had already been in diplomatic relations with Afghanistan before 9/11 to the tun of several billion dollars a year in aid and they still supported AQ before and after 9/11.
You cannot apply the art of war here in a literal sense. The problem is that the type of war is not expected to be won quickly in the first place. And yes, victory conditions have been defined, you simply do not want to accept them. The conditions are (for Iraq) when the Iraqi government is elected
Good sentiment and nice liberal touch but sadly your accounting doesn't favor reality.
Faisal Shahzad said his reasons for attempting the bombing was because of slew of deaths among leaders of the terror group ehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. So it isn't the deaths of innocent civilians that took him to evil, it was the deaths of leaders mixed in with the evil that brainwashed him in the first place.
Whether or not this was sparked by a bombardment of images of the enemy dieing is sort of a moot point. In any war, there will be enemies and there will be enemies dieing. The only difference between this and letting them mind their own way is that they would be showing images of us dieing instead of them dieing. Call me conservative or one of those right wing nut jobs, but allowing them to kill us instead of us killing them is simply not acceptable. Allowing them to harbor and promote those not only wanting to but actually killing our citizens is simply not acceptable. Now, I understand that doesn't jibe with the liberal mindset but I'm not sure all that many people care. We cannot all just get along when they do not want to in the first place.
How about this instead,
Simply create a cost plus fee structure to where the filing fees are the same and if it takes the examiner longer then (some arbitrary number) 340 minutes of work logged onto the application, a costs assessment is added to the fees for time in excess of that amount which would be justified by logs and expense reports. All of the recording and reporting can be done in software that's pretty much off the shelf for the legal profession. I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't already being done internally with the USPTO to justify labor expenses.
There won't be a backlog if the time of the examiners were being paid for because you could hire and train more examiners. If it's a simple patent that can be approved or denied in a short time, normal fees apply, if it's more complicated or connected with 2000 other patents, then the time needed to process it will be covered by the applicant who stands to benefit much more then the costs of one extra employee for a week or two.
The wait time between charging the costs plus and the normal fee wouldn't be that important because the normal fee already assume a certain amount of time associated with it. You would only need to cover the excessive that causes the backlog. And if twice as many applications are being processed due to a costs plus fee like that, then the normal fees will double in gross receipts so the USPTO doesn't really lose out. Then, after they are caught up, all they need to do is manage their labor like any other business does, hire more when the need is there and lay some off when it isn't.
You could also use clerical staff form the military who tend to serve 4 to 6 years and make the patent examination part of their occupational training. Then when a backlog increases again, simply lease a few staffers from the Army, navy or whatever branch of the military for short terms and the problem is solved.
The point and problem isn't the raw data itself. It's the modifications and justifications made to the raw data that's primarily important that's also lost. The raw data contains information that wasn't used as well as information that was, the notes contained justifications for using or not using or adjustments to those data points and so on.
You see, years and years of research is built off of these manipulations or normalizations and other studies are based off the fruits of this manipulation. You can't take the raw data and recreate the science without the justifications for the manipulations. Have you ever heard the saying "garbage in garbage out"? Well, it goes here too. If they were wrong on that initial data manipulation, then everything built from it could very well be wrong too. You can take the raw data and never see the same results and with those varying results, come up with completely different conclusions in works built from that.
Here is a small and very simplified example, suppose we start with 1 and add multiples of .10 in progression. The raw data would lead you to believe that it would go something like 1.0, 1.10, 1.20, 1.30 and so on. But when the data gets manipulated (legitimately or incorrectly), we could get .95, 1.05, 1.15, 1.25, and so on. Now someone builds from that data, and they manipulate it because of the heat island effect, and they build it into .90, 1.1, 1.20, 1.3 and so on. But what if the heat island effect has already been accounted for on half of the data from the first compilation, then to be correct, we might need something like .95, 1.05, 1.2, 1.3 to be accurate. Notice how the gap between the second and third value is different then the .10 value? However, without the methods and justifications, you have no clue that the first half of the data is wrong and reprocessing the raw data without the methodology will not produce comparable or compatible results.
So anyone with sufficient interest is pretty much screwed at this point- even though the raw data or portions there of can be found.
There is probably going to be some sort of code injected into the video that will allow detection of which subscriber recorded the video. It wouldn't be all that hard to do either. Simply having a cut scene where a different brand of drink is used or some labeling being different can be done to track down which geographical region the PPV happened in, using something like the display on a clock can show the time and date it was shown and one or two other things could narrow it down to a specific vendor. Or they could just inject a few artifacts into the video that would contain all the important information as well.
All that can be done by computer when the video is streamed to the user. It can be documented and stored. It wouldn't surprise me if it's not already able to be done and they aren't jumping on it in order to catch the major distributors.
Of course what can be done by the MPAA can also be undone by the user with another computer depending on how much detail they want to get into. Something as simple as cutting several copies together into one full length feature could pretty much inject so much uncertainty to make enforcement near impossible.
I'm suggesting this so you don't run out and be the first ones to discover it. Look for this crap before doing it- even if your not the one I'm replying to.
With all due respect, how am I or anyone else supposed to know something happening unless someone convinces me it's happening? There can't be an if, unless there is an is. So if I tell you that this car was owned by a little old lady that stored it in a garage and only drove it to church on Sundays, are you going to believe me that it's a sound car or are you going to check into it more?
What I'm getting at is that there are so many people out there attempting to con us out of our money. With the global warming debate, we saw a backlash against high taxes and out of control government spending which saw a political change in power in the US for almost over a decade. Now, the global warming people are saying that increasing taxes and government spending is the only way to deal with this gloom and doom that is global warming. So convince me or your not getting my credit card information. And saying that I shouldn't be questioning you or whoever (the you is a figure of speech, not you specifically) but doing what you say is somewhat the mark of a goof con to begin with. I mean this is evident with almost every scam from loans to pressuring the elderly into paying for home repairs that won't be completed to scamming someone out of their life savings.
What you basically saying is ignore everything you have built up to guard against fraud and do what those that might defraud you want.
I'm not sure that the level of skepticism has been dealt with as admirably as you present. Data sets have been destroyed, lost, or otherwise withheld from people simply wanting to verify the results, scientists have conspired to make that happen, admitted to exaggerating the details because the ends justify the means and so on. Many of the skeptics questions like how water vapor or solar activity plays into the mix have been flat out rejected until eventually incorporated into models that still aren't reliably accurate. Perhaps if you're already a member of the quire, the preaching is enough to keep you convinced, however, many people aren't and they want some answers. Claiming that anyone prominent to get attention to the questions is somehow connected to big oil or a republican or something else that doesn't answer the question simply isn't enough.
AGW=Anthropogenic Global Warming. Basically, it's the warming caused by man or thought to be caused by man. It's a pretty important distinction between global warming because it implicitly injects man as a fault in which it claims man has to change it's behavior.
Actually, he does.. and he isn't ignoring anything either.
You see, none of what you mentioned proved AGW, none of what you mentioned proves the earth will get warmer or cooler or anything that's being claimed by AGW. Those are known facts but as often is the case, what works in theory doesn't always work in practice. If it did, then they wouldn't be adjusting the data to make the models work and they wouldn't be adjusting the models to get them somewhat historically accurate but never predictably accurate. Let's put it another way, Co2- which is less then .000350 or so of the atmosphere and of which, only .000100 or so is being claimed to be a problem and somehow that 100 or so parts per million is going to have a different effect than the first 60% of it.
The bottom line is that we do not understand the science behind the climate well enough to makes claims like that. There is a big difference between likely being a certain way and actually being a certain way. As of now, just like with evolution and the big bang, it's only been shown to be likely, not certain that it's a certain way. And if you can't tell the difference between fact and evidence to support a theory, you should clearly state your political affiliation and stop pretending to be of a scientific mindset.
This is so one sided it is laughable. UEA fought well and hard to remove their data sets from public scrutiny- So much that the UK finally passed a law mandating they hand it over after their "let hide everything" emails became public. Hansen and Mann have taken it so far that they do not even have the formulas for the original manipulations/normalizations to the original data sets. And seeing how you are on slashdot, I'm sure you have heard the saying Garbage in Garbage out, how in the hell can you question someone wanting to know if this isn't the case when a lot of the data sets available are manipulations based on forgotten techniques purposely hidden by their creators? No, burying you head in the sand does not make the things you do not like disappear thereby allowing you to falsely shift blame to others. If you are indeed that ignorant of the surrounding controversy, then I suggest you start looking into it by looking at James Hansen's interview where he said exaggerating the effects of climate change was perfectly fine because the ends justify the means. And no, that's not an exact quote, but it's a reasonable take on his statement.
I'll say this, you are the pot calling the kettle black. I started off replying to you to simply show you that theory does not make a fact but facts can make a theory. Then after reading how ignorant you seem to be about the subjects at hand including the concerns of skeptics, you started making me mad. You seriously have no room to scold anyone about anything based on the tripe you just rambled off. Correlation does not mean cau
Stupid republican..
Or is it just rush Limbaugh that eats kittens?
Oh well, make sure you don't use cat-sup. you may lose the urge to eat kittens.
But you see, there are already special laws on the books for that. You do not need to invent new ones to deal with it regardless of how often it happens or not. All you need to do is increase the penalty and enforce it if it isn't enough of a deterrent. And this doesn't matter if you're gay, straight, bi, try, a Mozart lover, or whatever, if you're getting assaulted and it's unacceptable, then enforce the existing laws and perhaps increase the penalties. There is no need to special laws to give people special privileges.
Hate isn't the problem, acting on that hate in illegal ways is. Still no need to create special laws because it's already illegal. Enforce the existing laws, increase the penalties, but there is absolutely no need to create a special law that protects a small portion of the population more then others.
It's not just the size and scope, it's the core of the point the hate is directed at. Gays experience hate over their actions, Blacks experience hate over simply being alive because their skin isn't the right color. You can change your actions and behavior, you can't change the color of your skin (even though people have tried). There is simply no equivalence between the two situations.
Here is the problem with hate crime laws. I can kill a black man and face life in prison and possibly the death penalty, I can call him a nigger when doing it and get the same punishment except now I get a stronger lecture when they hand it down- "We are really mad at you instead of just mad at you". I can beat up a black man and get in the same amount of trouble if I beat up a white guy or a gay guy. Are you with me? Well, suppose the assault is a first degree misdemeanor and carries a max sentence of 6 months and a $1000 fine. That's the way it is in my neck of the woods. Now suppose there is hate crime legislation and if I yell nigger or queer when I'm beating them up, It's a 4th degree felony and I face a maximum of 1 year in prison and $10,000 fine. So now I can take the misdemeanor by assaulting the two people by not calling them nigger or queer, they are just as assaulted are they not? Do you see how pointless the hate crime legislation is? The black man or the gay man still got assaulted for being queer or black, but I just didn't tell them. So if the penalty for assault was increased to a 4th degree felony, there would be no way I could get around th
It's trying to do nothing but make the ISP honest in it's marketing so consumers can get what they paid for or choose another provider- Nothing else, nothing more.
It's not semantics at all, I think your either reading your own fears and inhibitions into it or not paying attention to the language at all. And no, your point doesn't cover my post unless you think it is perfectly acceptable for someone to offer one thing and takes steps to deny those offerings after you have purchased it. In that case, I would venture to say that your opinion is unimportant in this discussion.
When the industry is an oligopoly, then the reason is more money.
All oil "in" the US is controlled to some extent by 5 different oil companies of which no more then 4 operate in any one state at a time. This is because they own all the refineries and the environmentalist will not let anyone build new ones without billions being spend on court battles and decades of being tied up in courts.
Anyways, BP wouldn't have to collude to fix oil prices. They would just enter the hedge markets as an interest bearing investment to store recovery and cleanup funds and drive the prices up by the creating an artificial demand on oil futures. This would increase the costs of crude for all of the companies but it would stop BP from taking a loss because it would be spread out to others in the market which end up costing you at the pump. Exxon and others would simply look at it as a win-win as they would make the same amount of extra profit.
BTW, don't doubt me on this. The entire hedge situation with oil is part of what lead up to the financial collapse. But more importantly, if you remember, we went from 4 to 5 dollar a gallon fuel to almost 2 dollar a gallon fuel at the pump almost over night when wall street crashed. Demand hadn't changes, production hadn't changed, what changed was the amount of money floating around in the futures.
People randomly kick the shit out of others for no reason at all, all the time. And yes, at a few bars I hang in, it can be over drinking a few girls or screwing some girl. I broke a fight up just 2 weeks ago over someone wanting to kick the hell out of their girlfriend's ex from 3 years previously. I saw someone get their ass kicked for playing dance music instead of country. It happens to all sorts of people and gays do not have some monopoly on it. It's either some inane grudge someone has or it's over behavior that someone finds offensive. Believe it or not, acting gay does offend some people. But as we all know, you can choose to be a flamer or not.
First of all, I don't believe there should be such terms as hate crimes. It's either a criminal act or it isn't. If people are still assaulting others, it shouldn't matter why, the penalties should be increased until it's a deterrent. I do not see why a gay person should have more legal protection from assaults or other criminal activities then a straight person or a women or a man or whatever. I do not see why a politician should have more protections then a regular person unless the assault is over them doing their jobs, and I don't believe it's ok to have gay on gay assaults or black on black assaults be less of an offense then black on white, white on black, hetero on homo or vice versa. Almost every nerd or geek got picked on in high school, should they deserve a special protection class too?
the entire idea of hate crimes is little more then special rights compared to others. It does nothing more then illustrate my point.
BTW, I have never assaulted someone that I didn't hate at the moment. There were various reasons behind the hate, but it all boiled down to hate of some sort or defending myself which turns quickly into hating the attacker. Most people who are honest with themselves will see the hate as the same.
That's just nonsense. Gays are not in the same struggles as blacks were. You can't seriously sit there and tell me that you are equating something someone was born with and has little to no chance of changing with something that is a choice. And yes, even though some people think that gays are genetic mutants who were born that way (I don't happen to agree), ho they act on that is a choice just the same as it is a choice for a woman to sleep with a man or whatever. It's the behavior that people find offensive and behavior can change or be concealed. With the blacks, they would have had to change their skin color which is next to impossible even in today's world of medicine.
Gays do not share the same plight blacks have had, blacks wanted to live, gays want to live a certain way. It's not the same and I'm offended that you somehow think it is. It does nothing but cheapen what people suffered through just because of the way they looked and had no choice to change it. There would be a lot less gay bashing if they didn't get into everyone's face and do the equivalent of a white man strapping a sign on that says "I hate you niggers" and parading through the middle of Harlem at midnight. For the gays that get beat up who do not do that, join the club because it happens to a lot of different people depending on where they hang out at.
Actually, I think you are. You said that a particular scenario when I used the scenario as illustrative and not definite, was "extremely contrived and strained next to the scenario where they share in the guilt". In my scenario, a number of different things could have happened to which they would share guilt but not be criminally liable/guilty. You seemed to get lost on the entire separation between the two. You can be guilty of destroying someone's property and not be guilty of breaking any laws. I never intended for the situation to be construed as all the girls were innocent or guiltless, in which you attempted to portray which is why I made the statement that you got lost. I even purposed a scenario where their involvement was so shaky as for a prosecution that it was more valuable for them to testify against the boys instead which is what happened.
The girls could have been complicit and guilty of the act. The question is if there was enough evidence to prosecute them or not or if their involvement lacked a provable Mens rea.
Perhaps there is more then one elephant in the room. Especially when the conversation was specific to a certain point.
Read what I wrote again and this time, strap your knees to the chair to avoid the jerking motion. I _did_not_say ISPs have to treat all data the same, I said they had to unless they clearly and plainly disclosed their intent not to treat it the same in all their advertisements and contracts with their consumers. What this means is that they can manipulate the data all they want as long as they do not slow the speeds or alter the traffic to below what was promised to their customer with their advertising and contracts with them unless the network is under attack or damaged. In comparison with your food product, it's the same as saying you have to list the ingredients on the wrapper so the consumer can inspect that before purchasing the item.
As I said before, this isn't telling anyone what is best for them, it's saying that you should get what you paid for period. I know when your knee is jerking, that's hard to see but the entire language about plainly and clearly and obvious was the part that alluded to it. Strap your knees down again so you fulling understand this part- In this case, if an ISP advertises something and a consumer purchases it, then both of them have already decided what was best for them. If the ISP secretly and purposely acts to change that because they over sold their network space or because they think they can ransom some website by denying the communications their customer requested and expected to receive due to the ISP's advertising or implied contract terms, then the consumer is entitled to damages.
Not in the terms I put the purposed law in. Nothing breaks except the ability of ISP's or service providers to claim one thing in public while secretly doing another.
Read what I wrote again, take it slow this time and lose this misconception that it's placing restrictions all over the place. If the ISP isn't prepared to conform to it, they simply do not offer services that they cannot provide. It's that simple- nothing more or less.
That's essentially the same argument passed around in the US by conservatives. It's to allow the liberals to tax more and sneak in programs that we don't agree with. This premise originated back in the late 1980's and early 1990's when the UN instituted the IPCC and work on the Kyoto treaty started. Back around this time, there was a push for the first world nations to forgive the third world debt incurred during the oil crisis in the 1970's when they borrowed money to explore for oil to aid in out oil crunch. Once oil dropped in price, these third world countries found it difficult to repay their loans.
Anyways, this push all the sudden disappeared in the early 90's and a semi secrete treaty was announced pertaining to global warming. In this treaty was a mechanism that made the third world countries profitable again by artificially inflating the value of energy that could be surpassed by investments in the same third world countries. This is commonly refereed to in modern terms as cap and trade. A lot of speculation has occurred over why only 37 or so countries that signed on to Kyoto were actually limited and if the benefit of potential foreign investment wasn't present, if the other 120 some odd countries would have signed on to it.
The rich verses poor is actually a hold over of a political technique that has netted the left in America some overwhelming support. It generally started when Unions were demanding things that weren't traditionally given to employees and the battle cry was something along the lines of the rich keeping their money while the workers struggled to pay their bills. This eventually morphed into the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. At one time, the republicans believed that government should get out of the way of the people and let them determine their own wealth. This of course led to the rich getting richer because as more wealth was created, they had a hand in that creation. So not the tired old battle cry of the democrats seems to be that the republicans are for the rich and they are for the poor. Of course who is rich and poor is a double standard once they get elected.
Ditto.. In case being from the UK, you do not understand what I mean by Ditto, It's basically I couldn't have said it better myself.
Here is the problem. And this problem is a key to why people think gay rights are "special" rights and do not think entitlements should be created for them.
If it's wrong to fire someone for something completely not related to their job performance, then why should only gays be protected? Why shouldn't everyone be protected? So if someone does something on their own time, outside of company property, that doesn't effect their ability to do the job at all, nor does it put the company in a bad light with their customers, then why is it only gays who should be protected from termination and not you who goes hunting on the weekends or drinks a few beers with friends, or hooked up with 3 college girls- one of them happening to be a stripper, or you who campaigned for and supported some political entity that the boss doesn't agree with?
The problem here seems to be that gays want something special for themselves. They want to be able to visit sick loved ones in the hospital yet other unmarried people cannot do it just the same, they want protections from being fired for activities outside the workplace, yet others will still be able to be fired. It simply comes off to many, many people as special rights, not human rights.