That reminds me; the US is one of the worst offenders in regards to giving foreign (generally third world) countries money to influence their political and social structure.
I wouldn't disagree with this so much if (1) our own government could get it's act together and (2) it actually worked (disappointing success rate; low return on investment, so to speak; stop sending my money overseas to other greedy power hungry tyrants).
More recently I'm thinking of the Bush administration giving African countries... financial assistance only if they abide by abstinence only campaigns,
Abstinence is the solution.
which like in the US, is having opposite effects.
Only according to some theories and biased studies. The problem is not with teaching abstinence, but with what our society is willing to tolerate. We try to teach abstinence, but our media and advertisers are screaming sex at the top of their proverbial lungs. It's a topic that has become impossible to ignore. There is little wonder why abstinence education has been given a poor track record. There are other problems with abstinence education, but this is the fundamental problem. I don't care if you take your vitamins daily, if someone is constantly blowing second hand smoke in your face, you're not going to be at peak health.
At least one country banned the importation of condoms which has led to an increase in AIDS.
Now that's just stupid. I agree that this is not a desirable outcome. If condom manufacturers are going to have trouble, let it be from low demand due to actual abstinence. As a side note, It's the promiscuity that's the problem, not the condoms themselves.
(actually they are giving the money to the dictators of those countries)
I know. It's disgusting.
On another interesting side note I remember the US gave the then fledgling Russian democracy (I think it was) a 5 billion dollar donation to help in the transition to democracy. When they attempted to audit the money nobody in the Russian government could tell them what happened to it. Shortly there after the rise of the billionaire oligarchs occurred.
Interesting. I hadn't heard that one yet. It doesn't surprise me too much, but I'll need to find another source to verify this
As you alluded, politics certainly is intertwined with economics (but getting back to my original point, I will emphasize that they are still distinct from each other).
Economics is a study of how people treat money. Government and economics are indeed intertwined. I think all we are really disagreeing on is how fuzzy the line is between them.
Yes businesses aren't just leaving California, they are leaving America because of economic conditions.
Large businesses have long left the US for tax reasons. You seem to suggest that this is accelerating like it has in CA? (that would be interesting indeed)
This is one reason why I am in favor of making it a treasonous offense to accept campaign donations from foreign entities. I cannot relocate my personal headquarters and still enjoy the benefits of the US. They should either pay their share of taxes*, or be treated as a foreign entity with foreign intents.
I don't know about you, but I also don't want random foreign groups donating to politicians campaigns. I want my politicians beholden to the people of this country, and inevitably failing that, to American special interests (unfortunate, but better than foreign interests).
(*arguably, these should be smaller and with fewer loopholes, but it is still no excuse. This is a loophole and should be closed.)
... that it makes sense to tax rich people at a higher rate...
That is politics and not economics.
Oh, but it effects economics. It effects what states and countries rich people and corporate headquarters reside in. Why do you think businesses are leaving California in droves? (so I've heard - and yes, I personally know more than one small business owner who has left the state in the last few years.)
To clarify krenshala's answer, he meant to say "If it was unsanctioned", which is the distinction that Xerolooper was trying to make (sanctioned v. unsanctioned, so to speak).
While it is in the Bill of Rights, we are not permitted the right to a speedy trial. A speedy trial has been interpreted as "within a couple of years" while two opposing attorneys put together cases for the trial. Granted, most don't take that long, but they can. (The latest Simpson escapade lasted for a full year. That's not a speedy process.)
... but such patents would not benefit society in any way,...
That's why I contend that such patents are unconstitutional. Congress only has the right to "[secure] for limited times... the exclusive right to... writings and discoveries" if it will "promote the progress of science and useful arts". Nothing else is within their enumerated powers.
Article 1 Section 8
The Congress shall have power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;...
Amendment 10
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
I can accept some allowances for IP in software, but it should be strongly curtailed. It should only be allowed for things that are otherwise unmarketable. Limited copyright would be fine (for example), but not what we have today. Most of us will be long dead before any current software enters the public domain. That is far beyond promoting science and useful arts. This abuse of power is disgusting.
Uhm, I'm sorry? Last time I checked trees convert CO2 to oxygen instead of simply storing CO2 into their bodies!
"... where do the carbon atom go?" It's converted to glucose...
So the law of conservation of mass is real, what a big surprise. What are you expecting? What are you hoping for? That the C mysteriously disappears?
You're not paying attention to yourself, are you? Or maybe you're just trolling. You spout off something incomplete and nonsensical, and then try to defend yourself using our points.
To address the rest of your post: Carbon exist. It has been stored on the planet in trees, and in the ground, among other places. We are releasing the carbon that is stored in those places. We don't like the carbon that is now stored in our atmosphere. If one accepts the premise that perilous climate change is being caused by the carbon in our atmosphere, then we must move it elsewhere. Because a part of that carbon came from trees, a part of it could be sequestered in trees again. Unless you count the timber and construction industries, this wont do anything more than putting back a portion of the carbon that we have released. If you covered the planet with plant growth, we would still have all the carbon released from petroleum products in the atmosphere.
Actually, if we could decrease the cost of artificial diamonds, it would be a good thing for manufacturing. If I remember, diamond makes a very good solid lubricant. We could design machines with longer life, lower maintenance, and slightly more efficient.
Zoning regulators (city council, etc) like that cannot exist in sufficient numbers for a sufficient period of time. They are normally replaced after an election or two with the broken models. I think people understand that politics is a dirty game played by thieves, but I don't think they're currently capable of choosing the good politicians from the bad. As one slashdoter said "99% of all lawyers make the rest of us look bad." I think the same holds for politicians.
Hey, I'm not the one who made the original statement or the followup explanation. I'm not one of the guys who modded him "troll". I didn't say that he'd used good judgment, or that we weren't sinking into shark infested cupcakes.
I'm just saying that you made a mistake yourself, and you can learn from it.
Is there such a thing? I know there are international organizations that are sufficiently independent and bipartisan to claim that. The real question is: is there a sufficient set of metrics to gage "properly international". The UN and the IOC, perhaps the best known international organizations would fail any such metric. This leads me to doubt that it exists (or believe that the current political environment makes it infeasible).
How then can anyone demand ICANN go "properly international"? (This question will plague everyone before it does go international.)
I have mod-points, but I'll be kind and respond instead. Compare the user IDs of the two posts. He was trying to give an explanation to brain-dead moderators. He didn't communicate this very well, but your over-your-head style response was entirely inaccurate. It was an easy mistake to make.
I hope the EFF doesn't become like the ACLU. We can barely stand one of those! (It wouldn't be so bad if they actually focused on civil liberties, instead of just doing that on the side.)
You want a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail. California law now requires it (I think that begins this election). Personally, I'm all for electronic voting, but I'm entirely against the companies that provide it.
Hey, you can talk till you're blue in the face, but I'm still not going to debate the definition with you. It's really cheap of you to claim that I refuse to let you reply.
Easy to find examples where the "most probable outcome" is so unlikely it will never happen in your lifetime, even if you repeated every second.
True, but this isn't one of those. Even if you were to take this principle to the extreme and say 200 out of every 400, then it would still be likely if you were willing to accept even a small margin of difference (ex: +/-5%). This inexactness is implied in significant figures here, even if it isn't stated. (It was in the original too, though that's probably a moot point.)
You meet 4 people. The probability that exactly 2 of them are below average intelligence is (about) 37.5%.
This is true. I didn't say otherwise. What I said was that.375 was the "most likely" outcome. This proves your initial assertion wrong.
2 out of 4 people you meet on the street are likely to have below average intelligence.
That is not correct. The chance is really binom(4 ; 2) / 2^4 = 37.5%.
He didn't say that more than 50% of the time you will run into exactly 2 below average people. He said that running into 2 below average people out of a sample of 4 was likely.
Now I'd rather not get into splitting hairs on the definition of "likely". As far as I'm concerned, "most probable outcome" is good enough for me. The definition swings anywhere from "within the realm of credibility" to "having a good chance of occuring" and further to "a 60% or 70% chance". Nailing that one down is going to be an impossible and fruitless task. I wont debate it because it would be a waste of my time.
Slashdot Mirror
That reminds me; the US is one of the worst offenders in regards to giving foreign (generally third world) countries money to influence their political and social structure.
I wouldn't disagree with this so much if (1) our own government could get it's act together and (2) it actually worked (disappointing success rate; low return on investment, so to speak; stop sending my money overseas to other greedy power hungry tyrants).
More recently I'm thinking of the Bush administration giving African countries... financial assistance only if they abide by abstinence only campaigns,
Abstinence is the solution.
which like in the US, is having opposite effects.
Only according to some theories and biased studies. The problem is not with teaching abstinence, but with what our society is willing to tolerate. We try to teach abstinence, but our media and advertisers are screaming sex at the top of their proverbial lungs. It's a topic that has become impossible to ignore. There is little wonder why abstinence education has been given a poor track record. There are other problems with abstinence education, but this is the fundamental problem. I don't care if you take your vitamins daily, if someone is constantly blowing second hand smoke in your face, you're not going to be at peak health.
At least one country banned the importation of condoms which has led to an increase in AIDS.
Now that's just stupid. I agree that this is not a desirable outcome. If condom manufacturers are going to have trouble, let it be from low demand due to actual abstinence. As a side note, It's the promiscuity that's the problem, not the condoms themselves.
(actually they are giving the money to the dictators of those countries)
I know. It's disgusting.
On another interesting side note I remember the US gave the then fledgling Russian democracy (I think it was) a 5 billion dollar donation to help in the transition to democracy. When they attempted to audit the money nobody in the Russian government could tell them what happened to it. Shortly there after the rise of the billionaire oligarchs occurred.
Interesting. I hadn't heard that one yet. It doesn't surprise me too much, but I'll need to find another source to verify this
As you alluded, politics certainly is intertwined with economics (but getting back to my original point, I will emphasize that they are still distinct from each other).
Economics is a study of how people treat money. Government and economics are indeed intertwined. I think all we are really disagreeing on is how fuzzy the line is between them.
Yes businesses aren't just leaving California, they are leaving America because of economic conditions.
Large businesses have long left the US for tax reasons. You seem to suggest that this is accelerating like it has in CA? (that would be interesting indeed)
This is one reason why I am in favor of making it a treasonous offense to accept campaign donations from foreign entities. I cannot relocate my personal headquarters and still enjoy the benefits of the US. They should either pay their share of taxes*, or be treated as a foreign entity with foreign intents.
I don't know about you, but I also don't want random foreign groups donating to politicians campaigns. I want my politicians beholden to the people of this country, and inevitably failing that, to American special interests (unfortunate, but better than foreign interests).
(*arguably, these should be smaller and with fewer loopholes, but it is still no excuse. This is a loophole and should be closed.)
... that it makes sense to tax rich people at a higher rate...
That is politics and not economics.
Oh, but it effects economics. It effects what states and countries rich people and corporate headquarters reside in. Why do you think businesses are leaving California in droves? (so I've heard - and yes, I personally know more than one small business owner who has left the state in the last few years.)
But only if someone comes along and explains why this is so...
(Think about it... think about it...)
To clarify krenshala's answer, he meant to say "If it was unsanctioned", which is the distinction that Xerolooper was trying to make (sanctioned v. unsanctioned, so to speak).
While it is in the Bill of Rights, we are not permitted the right to a speedy trial. A speedy trial has been interpreted as "within a couple of years" while two opposing attorneys put together cases for the trial. Granted, most don't take that long, but they can. (The latest Simpson escapade lasted for a full year. That's not a speedy process.)
What happens if you take the Bush Administration approach? "I don't recall my pass phrase."
They (quite reasonably) won't believe that anyone could possibly be that stupid.
Why is that stupid? Seems to have worked pretty well for the Bush team.
Because you missed his joke. Let me know if you still don't see it.
... but such patents would not benefit society in any way,...
That's why I contend that such patents are unconstitutional. Congress only has the right to "[secure] for limited times... the exclusive right to... writings and discoveries" if it will "promote the progress of science and useful arts". Nothing else is within their enumerated powers.
Article 1 Section 8
The Congress shall have power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;...
Amendment 10
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
I can accept some allowances for IP in software, but it should be strongly curtailed. It should only be allowed for things that are otherwise unmarketable. Limited copyright would be fine (for example), but not what we have today. Most of us will be long dead before any current software enters the public domain. That is far beyond promoting science and useful arts. This abuse of power is disgusting.
Uhm, I'm sorry? Last time I checked trees convert CO2 to oxygen instead of simply storing CO2 into their bodies!
"... where do the carbon atom go?" It's converted to glucose...
So the law of conservation of mass is real, what a big surprise. What are you expecting? What are you hoping for? That the C mysteriously disappears?
You're not paying attention to yourself, are you? Or maybe you're just trolling. You spout off something incomplete and nonsensical, and then try to defend yourself using our points.
To address the rest of your post: Carbon exist. It has been stored on the planet in trees, and in the ground, among other places. We are releasing the carbon that is stored in those places. We don't like the carbon that is now stored in our atmosphere. If one accepts the premise that perilous climate change is being caused by the carbon in our atmosphere, then we must move it elsewhere. Because a part of that carbon came from trees, a part of it could be sequestered in trees again. Unless you count the timber and construction industries, this wont do anything more than putting back a portion of the carbon that we have released. If you covered the planet with plant growth, we would still have all the carbon released from petroleum products in the atmosphere.
Nuclear: 55 g of CO2/kWh
???
Is that also a manufacturing cost or something? (honest curiosity)
Actually, if we could decrease the cost of artificial diamonds, it would be a good thing for manufacturing. If I remember, diamond makes a very good solid lubricant. We could design machines with longer life, lower maintenance, and slightly more efficient.
Zoning regulators (city council, etc) like that cannot exist in sufficient numbers for a sufficient period of time. They are normally replaced after an election or two with the broken models. I think people understand that politics is a dirty game played by thieves, but I don't think they're currently capable of choosing the good politicians from the bad. As one slashdoter said "99% of all lawyers make the rest of us look bad." I think the same holds for politicians.
Search here for "QED": http://www.theninemuses.net/quotes/hitchhiker.html (and enjoy!)
Am I missing something obvious here...?
Uh, yeah. When a tree burns or decomposes, what happens to those stored sugars? All of that carbon becomes CO2 again. That's bakuun's point.
It's American English. You're not about to change centuries of spelling differences by posting about it on Slashdot. I don't expect you to spell that way, just be aware that it is not misspelled. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences#-our.2C_-or
... equally easy to grease the correct hands in gringoland...
Not from what I've heard. I've never been to Mexico, but is it true that traffic cops expect you to bribe them?
Hey, I'm not the one who made the original statement or the followup explanation. I'm not one of the guys who modded him "troll". I didn't say that he'd used good judgment, or that we weren't sinking into shark infested cupcakes.
I'm just saying that you made a mistake yourself, and you can learn from it.
...before ICANN goes properly international.
Is there such a thing? I know there are international organizations that are sufficiently independent and bipartisan to claim that. The real question is: is there a sufficient set of metrics to gage "properly international". The UN and the IOC, perhaps the best known international organizations would fail any such metric. This leads me to doubt that it exists (or believe that the current political environment makes it infeasible).
How then can anyone demand ICANN go "properly international"? (This question will plague everyone before it does go international.)
I have mod-points, but I'll be kind and respond instead. Compare the user IDs of the two posts. He was trying to give an explanation to brain-dead moderators. He didn't communicate this very well, but your over-your-head style response was entirely inaccurate. It was an easy mistake to make.
I hope the EFF doesn't become like the ACLU. We can barely stand one of those! (It wouldn't be so bad if they actually focused on civil liberties, instead of just doing that on the side.)
You want a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail. California law now requires it (I think that begins this election). Personally, I'm all for electronic voting, but I'm entirely against the companies that provide it.
Hey, you can talk till you're blue in the face, but I'm still not going to debate the definition with you. It's really cheap of you to claim that I refuse to let you reply.
True, but this isn't one of those. Even if you were to take this principle to the extreme and say 200 out of every 400, then it would still be likely if you were willing to accept even a small margin of difference (ex: +/-5%). This inexactness is implied in significant figures here, even if it isn't stated. (It was in the original too, though that's probably a moot point.)
This is true. I didn't say otherwise. What I said was that .375 was the "most likely" outcome. This proves your initial assertion wrong.
He didn't say that more than 50% of the time you will run into exactly 2 below average people. He said that running into 2 below average people out of a sample of 4 was likely.
Now I'd rather not get into splitting hairs on the definition of "likely". As far as I'm concerned, "most probable outcome" is good enough for me. The definition swings anywhere from "within the realm of credibility" to "having a good chance of occuring" and further to "a 60% or 70% chance". Nailing that one down is going to be an impossible and fruitless task. I wont debate it because it would be a waste of my time.
Is it just me, or does an IQ of 100 mean less and less every year...
(As pointed out, it's a bell curve. If you don't get the joke, think about it for a minute.)
Warning: AC troll detected. Do not feed.