Not all, but many are, yes. It's a double standard in our society that bugs me. Expecting your date to put out because you bought her a nice dinner is OK, but paying her cash for sex isn't.
How about this, copulation or having sex with someone you're not married to has also been illegal. In those places having sex with your date would be illegal unless you two were married to each other.
The news said that our local police read Craigslist and bust the guys who hook up in a park down by the river. That's the way law enforcement should deal with these illegal activities: bust them when they happen.
The best way to deal with this, prostitution, is to make it legal again. It was only because of puritans, moralists, and others who want to control people that prostitution was made illegal in much of the US. According to Northwestern University prostitution was never legal in Chicago. However it was legal in other places. The same group that was successful in getting alcohol illegal with Prohibition, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, was able to exert influence to make prostitution illegal. For instance New Orleans used to have a redlight district where it was legal.
I think you really misunderstand the purpose of law enforcement. It's not a business where "the more prostitutes we put in jail the better." It's a service where the less prostitutes which exist the better. If they're arresting whores left and right they don't pat themselves on the back because it means they've failed to keep the crime in check.
I think it's you who don't understand law enforcement, which exist to protect people, ie victims, from involuntary harm. In a voluntary exchange such as between a prostitute and john there is no victim.
Prostitution used to be legal in many places in the US but puritans, moralists, and others who want to control people were able to have laws passed that made it illegal.
In my experience, people who touch the girls are usually man-handled by the bouncer and thrown out on their asses.
Have you ever actually witnessed this? Or do you simply watch too much television?
I've not only seen that happen but have seen clubs refuse to serve another drink even to those who are not clearly drunk or belligerent. I admit it may not be like that everywhere but as with the rest of the world, strip clubs are mirrors of the rest of society.
I have never seen anyone roughed up by a bouncer at a strip club, and I've been to a lot of clubs.
I've seen customers escorted out, and dragged kicking and screaming, by bouncers. When I was in the military I saw other military personnel do the same, even to others in the military. One dancer I knew lived with her boyfriend and wanted to move out because he was abusive. Another dancer loaned those of us who helped her move out a gun she owned.
ROFL...you fallen into the trap of believing anything a stripper tells you. I'm sure they said that they love you and think you're cute too haha...
It's all about money. If you show up with the cash you can buy anything you want. Period.
You've fallen for the propaganda yourself. Once upon a long tyme ago I hanged out at a strip club and made friends with the regular workers there. We called the lady who owned and managed it Mother once we hung out there a while. The boyfriend of one dancer worked there as the DJ. I baby sat their children a few tymes. I also baby sat another dancer's, who was married, children. Her sister worked as a dancer while working on a nursing degree in college. For months a couple of tymes a month we'd have a picnic or party at someone's home or in a park. I came to realize eventually strip dancers were no different than people from many other occupations.
As for showing up with cash and being able to buy anything, that applies in a lot of other places too. Rush Limbaugh even went doctor shopping to get his favored prescription drug.
TBH the housing act here in the UK makes it hard enough to evict even if you're not paying a penny, but hey ho.
My sister's an owner who rents apartments in the US and it took her about 6 months to have one of her tenants evicted after they stopped paying rent. During that tyme if she hadn't been able to pay her mortgage she could have lost the building. And it's not as if the tenant tried to pay, she wasn't even looking for work.
Everything changes when the $800K house will be worth $750K next year. The owner can't sell. They would probably need to get rid of the tenants to put the house on the market, but they can't afford to pay the full mortgage when the house doesn't sell in the slow market.
Owners who get rid of tenants who pay on tyme are stupid. Having a building already being rented saves a buyer the money to find a new renter. Currently I live in a house that was converted to a 4 unit apartment building. My sister bought the building years ago and at the tyme all of the apartments were rented. For the tenants the only thing that changed was who they paid the rent to. When I moved in we planned on her selling me the building when I was able to qualify for the mortgage, but with the housing market crash I don't when that will be, then when I took over ownership I'd do the same thing.
I do know that where I live (unlike in places like Illinois), rent houses actually generate positive cash flow
If the rental property is generating positive cash flow why isn't the bank being paid?
The judge will want to hear good reason for removing them, like they're putting holes in the walls or doing drugs or something.
That's a good reason kicking out residents, whether owners or renters, is bad when a home is foreclosed. Many occupants can trash a building when they are evicted. Days before law enforcement show up the building can be gutted with items like stoves and refrigerators sold. Normally. er in a good economy, money can be made from buying foreclosed houses. I met some people who bought foreclosed houses, one at a tyme, who would then move into it while they rehabilitated or remodeled it. They'd then put it back on the market. Of course unless the buyer has plenty of money and can wait until the economy improves it's not a good idea to try that today.
An example of the limits of the power of the courts is the Cherokee "Trail of Tears". The Supreme Court ruled that The State of Georgia did not have jurisdiction over the Cherokee. The state of Georgia evicted the Cherokee from their lands anyway.
Georgia may of been part of evicting the Cherokee but Cherokee also lived in the Carolinas, both North and South, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The Supreme Court rules against President Andrew Jackson with Chief Justice Marshall delivering the ruling. Jackson then basically told Marshall to raise his own army.
I hadn't seen it before. I looked at the site and notice it needs a net connection. I want to be able to work with photos offline. I also searched Photo.net but didn't see anything about it.
So where's the drop-in replacement for Photoshop? Sure some may be able to get by using GIMP but if you're a pro photographer who does print media then GIMP does not cut it.
This is kind of missing the point... There have been other replies that echoed what you just stated. Sure, there are some things that the GIMP doesn't do that Photoshop does. Just as there are some things that Oracle does that MySQL/PostgreSQL don't, etc. etc.
And your reply kind of misses my point, which is there's places and uses for both open source and closed source proprietary software. While there are areas where open source fills a need quite well, closed source does as well. Photoshop is one of those closed source programs. I'd love an open source program that could replace PS but GIMP isn't there. Now before I buy PS it, I've been thinking about installing Ubuntu on my Mac to try out CinePaint and see if it can do what I'll want to do. There is a version of CinePaint for OS X but it is not a native Mac app, instead it requires X11 and though I installed both I wasn't able to get CinePaint to run. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a tutorial or book on it either.
One doesn't have to look much further than Sun to see how OSS has demolished a once-mighty giant.
I don't doubt FOOS can and does eat into proprietary closed source software venders. But that's good for a free market. Competition pushes businesses to innovate or make a better product. Microsoft is a prime example. Besides Apple and Linux pushing MS to improving Windows, look at Internet Explorer. Once IE overtook Netscape in browsers used MS basically stopped improving and making IE standards compliant. It was only after Netscape was open sourced and Firefox, which I've been using for years, started growing did MS start improving IE. IE 5 came out on March 18, 1999 and IE 6 on August 27, 2001, about 2 1/2 years later. IE 7 though took 5 years for MS to release it after IE 6, it was released on October 18, 2006. In "August 2007 at the latest. On March 5, 2008, the first public beta (Beta 1) was released to the general public". I doubt if IE 8 have happened so fast if not for the competition from Google's Chrome, Firefox, and Apple's Safari.
... decided if I'm going to put the tyme and effort into programming my own software it may be worthwhile to sell what I come up with to others.
As a service or as binaries? Just worth pointing out that you don't have to give away your source code if you're not distributing anything.
As I don't want to start a software business I'd sale it as a binary. Selling a service would mean I'd have to provide a service which would take away tyme I could be taking photographs instead.
A common misconception about the GPL is that it somehow compels developers who incorporate any GPL-licensed code into always giving away their code. The only time that comes into play is when you distribute the code.
And if I try to sell it I will be distributing it. Sure I wouldn't have to sell it but if I'm going to put the effort into programming I'd like to be able to make more money off of it. There's just no way I could compeat with the commercial venders who sell to pro photographers using the GPL. Thinking of it this way may help, being able to sell software I program could make it worthwhile to take the tyme to program.
But if the market is "hot" enough, Open Source will eventually be there to eat its lunch. This has been happening over and over again for the past two decades.
So where's the drop-in replacement for Photoshop? Sure some may be able to get by using GIMP but if you're a pro photographer who does print media then GIMP does not cut it.
Have you ever written code and released it to the public? Was it used? I have. As a developer making contributions to public projects, I am much more inclined to contribute under the GPL than other licenses. Most of the world feels the same, hence the popularity of the GPL (and similar "viral" licenses) over the BSD-style licenses.
I hope to RSN. I've been talking about starting my own business combining computers and photography for a while. What I want to do is create a system for pro photographers to use computers and the net to sell photos, I started out wanting to do it for my own photography business. However after hearing a number of other photographers, pros and students, say they wanted to use the net to sell their photos I decided if I'm going to put the tyme and effort into programming my own software it may be worthwhile to sell what I come up with to others. If so I don't want them to just give the source code away to others. With the GPL I can't prevent that but with a BSD license I can.
Respectfully, I guess that I never quite understood that. Outside the context of the supernatural, how is behavior either good or bad? Why isn't it just homo sapiens behavior, like it would be in any other species?
We all have our own ideas of what's good or bad.
That behavior is either good or bad implies that we have a choice in our behavior (i.e. free will).
To a certain extent we all have free will, though not all of us can control our behavior all the tyme. I used to be easy going and didn't get angry, mad, or self defensive much. But now I know I can't always control myself. More than 10 years ago I survived a TBI or Traumatic Brain Injury and lost some abilities because of it. And I do mean "survived", while I was in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. I disagree with those docs but that's something else.
Now I need to read about how that Japanese guy is making out with the farming of blue fin tuna. If we can farm and release into the wild game fish people want, that would be great and help with the fish stocks. We can just farm these fish then send them to market, but there are those who still want to catch them.
There are problems with farmed fish. One is that farmed fish require vast amounts of feed stock. To produce 1 pound of fish for the table 5 pounds of fish are required. That feed stock has to be caught in nets, unfortunately large fish as well as the small feed stock fish are caught. A second problem is that aquaculture creates dead zones underneath the pens which kills more wildlife. Then with all the fish penned in a small volume they spread diseases readily. In order to prevent this they have to be given antibiotics which further degrades the environment.
Now there a method of aquaculture that doesn't have these problem, though they may have others. In Asia and India [pdf] fish are farmed by flooding a coastal area then closing the egresses. The fish penned are allowed to grow naturally until large enough before being harvested. When harvested the land is allowed to drain and because of all the fish manure makes good fertilizer it's good for planting crops like rice. It's also possible to farm fish and rice at the same tyme.
As much bad publicity as clear cutting gets it's usually the best way to manage timber cutting.
Unless there's a stream or buildings downhill from the clear cut. The roots of those trees help maintain the soil, remove them and the soil can be washed away. In streams silt can build up either damming it or making it shallower than otherwise. It can also bury fish eggs. With all that loose soil mudslides are more likely. Selective harvesting of trees can reduce this.
Commercial fishing is performed with nets (or longlines) and does not discriminate based on size.
If the fish are small enough they can slip through the nets. But you're right about long lines, they don't discriminate, even birds get caught by long lines.
While eastern Texas is indeed notably broken, I would posit that its broken-ness is an outgrowth of the underlying problem of forum shopping.
Except that federal judges are appointed by the president. If the president is appointing judges in eastern Texas who are plaintiff friendly why isn't this happening everywhere?
I'm curious as to your opposition; is there some benefit to forum shopping that I am missing?
First I didn't say I was opposed, I just went up the thread to make sure I didn't. Actually if anything I oppose forum shopping. I also oppose more new laws, I actually believe most laws should be revoked and that what's left as well as new laws should be reevaluated every few years at most. The same with regulations.
I would hazard a guess that there is a much higher percentage of atheists and agnostics among slashdotters than what is in the general population, so I just don't get the whole ascribing good/evil tags to human impact upon evolution. As I understand it, there is no right or wrong in evolution, only cause and effect.
I have said a number of tymes on/. that I am agnostic, "a" - without and "gnosys" - knowledge and so without knowledge as far as a higher power or being, but I still believe in good and bad. They are not exclusively a matter of religion or spirituality but are also part of ethics.
I'd in fact go further and say it has helped their evolution.
More precisely, you can't 'hurt' or 'help' evolution - you can't even really evolve in a 'bad' direction since evolution by definition increases the survivability of the species.
Sure species can evolve in a bad way. Birds, especially flight-less birds, in New Zealand evolved to live there. However since westerners brought cats, dogs, and rats many species have gone extinct and others are threatened. Simply when a species becomes specialized for a certain niche but that niche is subsequently disturbed that species may go extinct.
Slashdot Mirror
"The person that does the asking out to dinner pays."
"You are right, that is fair."
IOW, fair = the man pays.
Not if the female is the one that asks. If they don't want to pay then they shouldn't ask. The least they could do is see if going dutch is alright.
Falcon
Not all, but many are, yes. It's a double standard in our society that bugs me. Expecting your date to put out because you bought her a nice dinner is OK, but paying her cash for sex isn't.
How about this, copulation or having sex with someone you're not married to has also been illegal. In those places having sex with your date would be illegal unless you two were married to each other.
Fslcon
City/County/State budgets are tight and Obama isn't taxing businesses fast enough so why not just sue business directly.
If it were all about the money then why don't they legalize and tax prostitution?
Falcon
The news said that our local police read Craigslist and bust the guys who hook up in a park down by the river. That's the way law enforcement should deal with these illegal activities: bust them when they happen.
The best way to deal with this, prostitution, is to make it legal again. It was only because of puritans, moralists, and others who want to control people that prostitution was made illegal in much of the US. According to Northwestern University prostitution was never legal in Chicago. However it was legal in other places. The same group that was successful in getting alcohol illegal with Prohibition, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, was able to exert influence to make prostitution illegal. For instance New Orleans used to have a redlight district where it was legal.
Falcon
I think you really misunderstand the purpose of law enforcement. It's not a business where "the more prostitutes we put in jail the better." It's a service where the less prostitutes which exist the better. If they're arresting whores left and right they don't pat themselves on the back because it means they've failed to keep the crime in check.
I think it's you who don't understand law enforcement, which exist to protect people, ie victims, from involuntary harm. In a voluntary exchange such as between a prostitute and john there is no victim.
Prostitution used to be legal in many places in the US but puritans, moralists, and others who want to control people were able to have laws passed that made it illegal.
Falcon
Plain and simple, the erotic services section, at least for las vegas, is 99% blatant prostitution.
As a larger city in Nevada prostitution is illegal in Las Vega but it's legal in other parts of the state.
Falcon
In my experience, people who touch the girls are usually man-handled by the bouncer and thrown out on their asses.
Have you ever actually witnessed this? Or do you simply watch too much television?
I've not only seen that happen but have seen clubs refuse to serve another drink even to those who are not clearly drunk or belligerent. I admit it may not be like that everywhere but as with the rest of the world, strip clubs are mirrors of the rest of society.
I have never seen anyone roughed up by a bouncer at a strip club, and I've been to a lot of clubs.
I've seen customers escorted out, and dragged kicking and screaming, by bouncers. When I was in the military I saw other military personnel do the same, even to others in the military. One dancer I knew lived with her boyfriend and wanted to move out because he was abusive. Another dancer loaned those of us who helped her move out a gun she owned.
Falcon
ROFL...you fallen into the trap of believing anything a stripper tells you. I'm sure they said that they love you and think you're cute too haha...
It's all about money. If you show up with the cash you can buy anything you want. Period.
You've fallen for the propaganda yourself. Once upon a long tyme ago I hanged out at a strip club and made friends with the regular workers there. We called the lady who owned and managed it Mother once we hung out there a while. The boyfriend of one dancer worked there as the DJ. I baby sat their children a few tymes. I also baby sat another dancer's, who was married, children. Her sister worked as a dancer while working on a nursing degree in college. For months a couple of tymes a month we'd have a picnic or party at someone's home or in a park. I came to realize eventually strip dancers were no different than people from many other occupations.
As for showing up with cash and being able to buy anything, that applies in a lot of other places too. Rush Limbaugh even went doctor shopping to get his favored prescription drug.
Falcon
And this has exactly what to do with him going after crime in his jurisdiction?
Craigslist exist everywhere with net access not just in his jurisdiction.
Falcon
TBH the housing act here in the UK makes it hard enough to evict even if you're not paying a penny, but hey ho.
My sister's an owner who rents apartments in the US and it took her about 6 months to have one of her tenants evicted after they stopped paying rent. During that tyme if she hadn't been able to pay her mortgage she could have lost the building. And it's not as if the tenant tried to pay, she wasn't even looking for work.
Falcon
Everything changes when the $800K house will be worth $750K next year. The owner can't sell. They would probably need to get rid of the tenants to put the house on the market, but they can't afford to pay the full mortgage when the house doesn't sell in the slow market.
Owners who get rid of tenants who pay on tyme are stupid. Having a building already being rented saves a buyer the money to find a new renter. Currently I live in a house that was converted to a 4 unit apartment building. My sister bought the building years ago and at the tyme all of the apartments were rented. For the tenants the only thing that changed was who they paid the rent to. When I moved in we planned on her selling me the building when I was able to qualify for the mortgage, but with the housing market crash I don't when that will be, then when I took over ownership I'd do the same thing.
Falcon
I do know that where I live (unlike in places like Illinois), rent houses actually generate positive cash flow
If the rental property is generating positive cash flow why isn't the bank being paid?
The judge will want to hear good reason for removing them, like they're putting holes in the walls or doing drugs or something.
That's a good reason kicking out residents, whether owners or renters, is bad when a home is foreclosed. Many occupants can trash a building when they are evicted. Days before law enforcement show up the building can be gutted with items like stoves and refrigerators sold. Normally. er in a good economy, money can be made from buying foreclosed houses. I met some people who bought foreclosed houses, one at a tyme, who would then move into it while they rehabilitated or remodeled it. They'd then put it back on the market. Of course unless the buyer has plenty of money and can wait until the economy improves it's not a good idea to try that today.
Falcon
An example of the limits of the power of the courts is the Cherokee "Trail of Tears". The Supreme Court ruled that The State of Georgia did not have jurisdiction over the Cherokee. The state of Georgia evicted the Cherokee from their lands anyway.
Georgia may of been part of evicting the Cherokee but Cherokee also lived in the Carolinas, both North and South, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The Supreme Court rules against President Andrew Jackson with Chief Justice Marshall delivering the ruling. Jackson then basically told Marshall to raise his own army.
Falcon
Is every sperm sacred ? It moves under its own volition, it has a purpose, so is it alive ? Should wanking be ranked along-side abortion ?
For some sperm is sacred. Some religions say masturbation is a sin, or otherwise bad.
Falcon
this
I hadn't seen it before. I looked at the site and notice it needs a net connection. I want to be able to work with photos offline. I also searched Photo.net but didn't see anything about it.
Falcon
So where's the drop-in replacement for Photoshop? Sure some may be able to get by using GIMP but if you're a pro photographer who does print media then GIMP does not cut it.
This is kind of missing the point... There have been other replies that echoed what you just stated. Sure, there are some things that the GIMP doesn't do that Photoshop does. Just as there are some things that Oracle does that MySQL/PostgreSQL don't, etc. etc.
And your reply kind of misses my point, which is there's places and uses for both open source and closed source proprietary software. While there are areas where open source fills a need quite well, closed source does as well. Photoshop is one of those closed source programs. I'd love an open source program that could replace PS but GIMP isn't there. Now before I buy PS it, I've been thinking about installing Ubuntu on my Mac to try out CinePaint and see if it can do what I'll want to do. There is a version of CinePaint for OS X but it is not a native Mac app, instead it requires X11 and though I installed both I wasn't able to get CinePaint to run. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a tutorial or book on it either.
One doesn't have to look much further than Sun to see how OSS has demolished a once-mighty giant.
I don't doubt FOOS can and does eat into proprietary closed source software venders. But that's good for a free market. Competition pushes businesses to innovate or make a better product. Microsoft is a prime example. Besides Apple and Linux pushing MS to improving Windows, look at Internet Explorer. Once IE overtook Netscape in browsers used MS basically stopped improving and making IE standards compliant. It was only after Netscape was open sourced and Firefox, which I've been using for years, started growing did MS start improving IE. IE 5 came out on March 18, 1999 and IE 6 on August 27, 2001, about 2 1/2 years later. IE 7 though took 5 years for MS to release it after IE 6, it was released on October 18, 2006. In "August 2007 at the latest. On March 5, 2008, the first public beta (Beta 1) was released to the general public". I doubt if IE 8 have happened so fast if not for the competition from Google's Chrome, Firefox, and Apple's Safari.
... decided if I'm going to put the tyme and effort into programming my own software it may be worthwhile to sell what I come up with to others.
As a service or as binaries? Just worth pointing out that you don't have to give away your source code if you're not distributing anything.
As I don't want to start a software business I'd sale it as a binary. Selling a service would mean I'd have to provide a service which would take away tyme I could be taking photographs instead.
A common misconception about the GPL is that it somehow compels developers who incorporate any GPL-licensed code into always giving away their code. The only time that comes into play is when you distribute the code.
And if I try to sell it I will be distributing it. Sure I wouldn't have to sell it but if I'm going to put the effort into programming I'd like to be able to make more money off of it. There's just no way I could compeat with the commercial venders who sell to pro photographers using the GPL. Thinking of it this way may help, being able to sell software I program could make it worthwhile to take the tyme to program.
Falcon
But if the market is "hot" enough, Open Source will eventually be there to eat its lunch. This has been happening over and over again for the past two decades.
So where's the drop-in replacement for Photoshop? Sure some may be able to get by using GIMP but if you're a pro photographer who does print media then GIMP does not cut it.
Have you ever written code and released it to the public? Was it used? I have. As a developer making contributions to public projects, I am much more inclined to contribute under the GPL than other licenses. Most of the world feels the same, hence the popularity of the GPL (and similar "viral" licenses) over the BSD-style licenses.
I hope to RSN. I've been talking about starting my own business combining computers and photography for a while. What I want to do is create a system for pro photographers to use computers and the net to sell photos, I started out wanting to do it for my own photography business. However after hearing a number of other photographers, pros and students, say they wanted to use the net to sell their photos I decided if I'm going to put the tyme and effort into programming my own software it may be worthwhile to sell what I come up with to others. If so I don't want them to just give the source code away to others. With the GPL I can't prevent that but with a BSD license I can.
Falcon
Because the primary reason for the success of Linux is that it forces everyone to share their improvements.
The GPL only requires you to share if you distribute what you added or changed.
The best you can ever hope for with BSD is an incremental return.
Nope. The GPL offers freedom for users whereas BSD style licenses offer programmers freedom.
Falcon
Respectfully, I guess that I never quite understood that. Outside the context of the supernatural, how is behavior either good or bad? Why isn't it just homo sapiens behavior, like it would be in any other species?
We all have our own ideas of what's good or bad.
That behavior is either good or bad implies that we have a choice in our behavior (i.e. free will).
To a certain extent we all have free will, though not all of us can control our behavior all the tyme. I used to be easy going and didn't get angry, mad, or self defensive much. But now I know I can't always control myself. More than 10 years ago I survived a TBI or Traumatic Brain Injury and lost some abilities because of it. And I do mean "survived", while I was in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. I disagree with those docs but that's something else.
Falcon
Now I need to read about how that Japanese guy is making out with the farming of blue fin tuna. If we can farm and release into the wild game fish people want, that would be great and help with the fish stocks. We can just farm these fish then send them to market, but there are those who still want to catch them.
There are problems with farmed fish. One is that farmed fish require vast amounts of feed stock. To produce 1 pound of fish for the table 5 pounds of fish are required. That feed stock has to be caught in nets, unfortunately large fish as well as the small feed stock fish are caught. A second problem is that aquaculture creates dead zones underneath the pens which kills more wildlife. Then with all the fish penned in a small volume they spread diseases readily. In order to prevent this they have to be given antibiotics which further degrades the environment.
Now there a method of aquaculture that doesn't have these problem, though they may have others. In Asia and India [pdf] fish are farmed by flooding a coastal area then closing the egresses. The fish penned are allowed to grow naturally until large enough before being harvested. When harvested the land is allowed to drain and because of all the fish manure makes good fertilizer it's good for planting crops like rice. It's also possible to farm fish and rice at the same tyme.
Falcon
As much bad publicity as clear cutting gets it's usually the best way to manage timber cutting.
Unless there's a stream or buildings downhill from the clear cut. The roots of those trees help maintain the soil, remove them and the soil can be washed away. In streams silt can build up either damming it or making it shallower than otherwise. It can also bury fish eggs. With all that loose soil mudslides are more likely. Selective harvesting of trees can reduce this.
Clear cutting is the worst way to manage timber.
Falcon
Commercial fishing is performed with nets (or longlines) and does not discriminate based on size.
If the fish are small enough they can slip through the nets. But you're right about long lines, they don't discriminate, even birds get caught by long lines.
Falcon
While eastern Texas is indeed notably broken, I would posit that its broken-ness is an outgrowth of the underlying problem of forum shopping.
Except that federal judges are appointed by the president. If the president is appointing judges in eastern Texas who are plaintiff friendly why isn't this happening everywhere?
I'm curious as to your opposition; is there some benefit to forum shopping that I am missing?
First I didn't say I was opposed, I just went up the thread to make sure I didn't. Actually if anything I oppose forum shopping. I also oppose more new laws, I actually believe most laws should be revoked and that what's left as well as new laws should be reevaluated every few years at most. The same with regulations.
Falcon
I would hazard a guess that there is a much higher percentage of atheists and agnostics among slashdotters than what is in the general population, so I just don't get the whole ascribing good/evil tags to human impact upon evolution. As I understand it, there is no right or wrong in evolution, only cause and effect.
I have said a number of tymes on /. that I am agnostic, "a" - without and "gnosys" - knowledge and so without knowledge as far as a higher power or being, but I still believe in good and bad. They are not exclusively a matter of religion or spirituality but are also part of ethics.
Falcon
I'd in fact go further and say it has helped their evolution.
More precisely, you can't 'hurt' or 'help' evolution - you can't even really evolve in a 'bad' direction since evolution by definition increases the survivability of the species.
Sure species can evolve in a bad way. Birds, especially flight-less birds, in New Zealand evolved to live there. However since westerners brought cats, dogs, and rats many species have gone extinct and others are threatened. Simply when a species becomes specialized for a certain niche but that niche is subsequently disturbed that species may go extinct.
Falcon