Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
on
Assault Weapons Ban
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Perhaps you can explain away New Zealand or Switzerland. As Michael Moore figure out with Bowling for Columbine, it's not the guns.
The idea of citizens controlling the same weaponry as the military has several purposes.
Firstly, it creates a strong defensive force for the country in case of invasion. That doesn't seem as likely now as it did then, but I'd rather have it than not have it, kinda like the 3rd Amendment.
Secondly, it keeps the government in check by allowing the people the means to hold a revolution if necessary. England regularly rounded up swords in Scotland to keep it under its control (way back when, of course). Stalin did the same thing in many Soviet republics. China does it now. (I've heard they resort to using bombs now instead of guns. Much more safe, right?)
Thirdly, there is much evidence in England and Australia that the outlaw of weapons invariably leads to the criminals being the only ones that own them. Their home-invasion rates are also through the roof.
Regardless of your personal opinion on what the law should be, the highest law of the land says we are a nation of gun owners. It is my belief that the original intent of the 2nd Amendment did not allow for all of the current laws and regulations concerning firearms. I personally have never submitted to a background check and refuse to participate in registration programs.
Actually, I've heard from a few people lugging around psychology degrees that those of us with ADD/ADHD actually do very well in stressful positions such as being EMTs. Go figure.
I just refreshed my memory on Article II, Section 2 (which gives the President nominating power), and the way I read it is that the Senate can approve any nominee with a simple majority. The Constitution doesn't spell out HOW the Senate must do it, so changing the procedural rules should, as I understand it, be perfectly legal and Constitutionally sound.
I don't expect anyone to have the same interest I do, but I certainly expect my mate to support me in my political activity. That said, she needs to be pretty right-wing (socially conservative, fiscally right of libertarian) AND has to be LDS, period. I'm pretty flexible on just about everything else: I know which battles to pick.
Excellent idea. Tell a bunch of mentally-unstable small business owners that I'm going to detail their illegal activities to the feds when they know where I live. Oh, BRAVO. While we're at it, let's make sure that all witnesses to crimes have their names, addresses and phone numbers published for anyone to find and close down the Witness Protection Program.
To quote The Wizard of Oz: "What would you do with a brain if you had one?"
All of the recent court cases I've read have indicated that the courts are sympathetic to salaried workers that have to put in overtime, and they often find in favor of those employees. Still, IANAL.
I usually hate unions, but tech workers are one of those places where push has gone way past coming to shove. IT workers have been abused terribly for a very long time and we can only take so much abuse before we get fed up. So long as the membership isn't compulsory, the union sticks to JUST negotiating labor contracts and the workers keep a sharp eye on both the company AND the union, it just might work.
You know as well as I do that digital imagery is easily forged, often with convincing results. Putting all the trust into "infallable" digital systems is lunacy. It's usually easier to out a person as a liar than a computer.
With the pan/tilt and zoom features, what's to stop a camera from peering into a window? How long until they start adding things like infrared or night-vision? Maybe I'm just speaking for the tin-foil hat brigade, but these questions need to be asked.
This says nothing of the rights of the accused to face their accuser. When one of these systems is used to, say, issue a traffic citation, who's the accuser? You have no witness to the crime. It opens up a whole new can of worms, IMO.
Let's not forget that Dell brought back one of its call centers from India due to excessive customer complaints. I've also read that the lower cost of labor overseas is often outweighed by lack of individual action, time zone differences and culturally-caused communication problems. I've heard from several people in ATSI (a telecommunications association) that some clients came back after getting really poor results from offshoring.
Simply put, offshoring is not as clear-cut as everyone makes it out to be once you take in a lot of intangebles. I don't worry too much about it because, sooner or later, the inflation in wages will make offshoring too expensive to consider. It's already made India much less attractive as the one-time costs are taking longer to recoup.
Uh... the Senate was never chose by the executive branch. Go look at Article I, Section 3: "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote."
The legislative body was designed to give a balance between the people and the states in the federal government. You say yourself that the Senate was designed to allow "small states an equal standing with larger states". That's exactly true: it was to represent the states' interests!
The problem with Senators in the US is that they are elected. Thus, they really serve no purpose at all. They are just another copy of the lower house.
...
While the idea of an unelected house may seem un-democratic, it has many attributes that make it a much better "buffer" than an elected upper house. Since the body appointing the members is of a particular party, they will appoint people who favor their views. however, since a member of Senate serves for life, over the long term, rather than have one viewpoint in majority, the Senate will always have a huge diversity of opinions. Thus, you will likely *never* have a situation where one viewpoint controls both the lower, upper, and executive, branches of government.
You and I are in total agreement. Taking the Senate out of our direct control was for our own good even if the Progressives (what a contradictory name) didn't see it.
The legislatures still had to agree on who to appoint, too, and it made the selection process unique to each state. Could be a simple majority, could be a super-majority. This has the benefit of Senators doing what they think is right because they don't know what the legislature will look like in 6 years. They *had* to try and keep everyone happy instead of relying on gerrymandered districts.
It's just another layer of "check and balance" that's been built into this system. I'm not surprised that you (and I imagine many like-minded people) want to throw it out as I'm sure it seems arcane, but you must more carefully consider it. A lot of people said the same thing about US Senators, that the people should be trusted to choose them directly instead of letting the legislatures choose them. Are we better off now with direct election of Senators, or worse off?
I'd tend to say that we are worse off now. Senators operate largely on the same basis as the House: whoever brings home the most bacon gets re-elected. It also means the legislative body represents the interests of the people only and not of the states. While the Founders were distrustful of power and authority, there were also distrustful of allowing direct control of all government by the people as a whole.
I think you need to do a little reconsidering of your position. After having read on several of the Founders, I doubt they were more concerned with election fraud than direct elections.
I can see it already. "Plug in this miracle of a bug-zapper outside your home and it will generate power while it clears away those annoying pests!" Seriously, though, that would be a kinda cool gadget to have around. Maybe they could also branch out into ant and roach traps. Pest control AND micropower in one convenient device.
Geeze. I can't figure out if I'm being silly or serious now.
This is exactly what the electoral college is designed for, as a check against a popularly-elected president that horrifies Congress. It's usually in the best interests of the electors to go with the flow and approve who the voters choose, but it exists in case the next Hitler comes along so that even with a popular vote such a person would not come to power. (No, I don't think anyone running is the next Hitler, but hyperbole is great for driving points home.)
I use the predictive text for SMS on my Ericsson phone, and I'm always amazed at how accurate it is. I think this is a good thing for the Blackberry to reduce the size and cost of their devices and drive penetration. (Fewer keys = fewer moving parts = less breakage)
With everything that new cell phones do, though, I'm curious as to how Blackberry devices differentiate themselves. (I've never used one myself.) Mine can send and receive e-mail messages and it was a cheapo T226. Granted, it can only handle short messages and the screen isn't that large, but I imagine that's enough for most people that want e-mail on the go.
That's the first thing I thought of. Using these things in large security systems to keep archives would seem to be the most likely application.
Just allow the viable candidates
on
Open the Debates
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I think that the basis of a presidential debate should be viability. If a candidate will be on the ballot in enough states for it to be possible of a victory in the electoral college, then they should be let in. Right now, that includes Bush, Kerry, Badnarik, Cobb and Peroutka. Nader, though well-known, doesn't have a chance at an electoral victory due to ballot access issues.
If a debate stays focused on a few key issues and enforces strict time limits, they should be able to whip through 5-6 big issues in a 2-hour debate.
Three hours after the close of the polls here in Vegas, we still had single-digit reporting of precincts. It wasn't until this morning (presumably while I slept) that the county clerk had 100% reporting. It makes me wonder if they made the machines out of pocket calculators. Even a 286 could tally that stuff faster.
I hated my last job. The bosses were always jerks to everyone, they engaged in shady business practices and I never saw a raise even though I busted my butt to keep the place afloat when we were understaffed and turning over employees like flapjacks. I left on pretty amicable terms...
That is, right up until I went down to the US Bankruptcy courts and the IRS to report that the owner was skimming cash to avoid paying back his creditors. And also dropped a few notes to the FBI about their sex tourism business bussing guys down to Mexico and finding them hookers. And dropping a few lines to the FTC about unsolicited junk faxing. And letting their largest clients know just how much mark-up they were paying. And...
They probably don't know it was me, as they left a long string of disgruntled employees. Whenever I think about it, I just smile smugly, wondering how much jail time they'll end up with.
Most spam uses bad return addresses anyway. You could simply have it setup so that your e-mail system could initiate a reply in a fashion similar to the way bounces are generated. If it gets any message other than OK, it rejects the message before delivery.
Spammers would naturally move to using real addresses they culled from other sources, but it's a good first step that I believe would eliminate the vast majority of current spam.
I'll have to pick one of those up. I've been using a $20 Gamepad Pro from Gravis that's been okay, except it's REALLY easy to accidentally hit the diagonals. I really do like the 4-way D-pad much better for NES and SNES emulation, otherwise I end up getting frustrated when my finger isn't dead center and I go in some oddball direction.
... the spam will keep flowing. I guess the spammers themselves aren't the only ones raking in the green. I would imagine that the prospect of losing so much face to their largest clients is probably the only thing that got them to consider fixing the problem. If I happened to operate a large company, I wouldn't want to be associated with a company that's a spam factory.
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Perhaps you can explain away New Zealand or Switzerland. As Michael Moore figure out with Bowling for Columbine, it's not the guns.
The idea of citizens controlling the same weaponry as the military has several purposes.
Regardless of your personal opinion on what the law should be, the highest law of the land says we are a nation of gun owners. It is my belief that the original intent of the 2nd Amendment did not allow for all of the current laws and regulations concerning firearms. I personally have never submitted to a background check and refuse to participate in registration programs.
Actually, I've heard from a few people lugging around psychology degrees that those of us with ADD/ADHD actually do very well in stressful positions such as being EMTs. Go figure.
I just refreshed my memory on Article II, Section 2 (which gives the President nominating power), and the way I read it is that the Senate can approve any nominee with a simple majority. The Constitution doesn't spell out HOW the Senate must do it, so changing the procedural rules should, as I understand it, be perfectly legal and Constitutionally sound.
I don't expect anyone to have the same interest I do, but I certainly expect my mate to support me in my political activity. That said, she needs to be pretty right-wing (socially conservative, fiscally right of libertarian) AND has to be LDS, period. I'm pretty flexible on just about everything else: I know which battles to pick.
Excellent idea. Tell a bunch of mentally-unstable small business owners that I'm going to detail their illegal activities to the feds when they know where I live. Oh, BRAVO. While we're at it, let's make sure that all witnesses to crimes have their names, addresses and phone numbers published for anyone to find and close down the Witness Protection Program.
To quote The Wizard of Oz: "What would you do with a brain if you had one?"
All of the recent court cases I've read have indicated that the courts are sympathetic to salaried workers that have to put in overtime, and they often find in favor of those employees. Still, IANAL.
I usually hate unions, but tech workers are one of those places where push has gone way past coming to shove. IT workers have been abused terribly for a very long time and we can only take so much abuse before we get fed up. So long as the membership isn't compulsory, the union sticks to JUST negotiating labor contracts and the workers keep a sharp eye on both the company AND the union, it just might work.
That wouldn't worry me so much if I could own the same guns.
You know as well as I do that digital imagery is easily forged, often with convincing results. Putting all the trust into "infallable" digital systems is lunacy. It's usually easier to out a person as a liar than a computer.
With the pan/tilt and zoom features, what's to stop a camera from peering into a window? How long until they start adding things like infrared or night-vision? Maybe I'm just speaking for the tin-foil hat brigade, but these questions need to be asked.
This says nothing of the rights of the accused to face their accuser. When one of these systems is used to, say, issue a traffic citation, who's the accuser? You have no witness to the crime. It opens up a whole new can of worms, IMO.
Let's not forget that Dell brought back one of its call centers from India due to excessive customer complaints. I've also read that the lower cost of labor overseas is often outweighed by lack of individual action, time zone differences and culturally-caused communication problems. I've heard from several people in ATSI (a telecommunications association) that some clients came back after getting really poor results from offshoring.
Simply put, offshoring is not as clear-cut as everyone makes it out to be once you take in a lot of intangebles. I don't worry too much about it because, sooner or later, the inflation in wages will make offshoring too expensive to consider. It's already made India much less attractive as the one-time costs are taking longer to recoup.
Uh... the Senate was never chose by the executive branch. Go look at Article I, Section 3: "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote."
The legislative body was designed to give a balance between the people and the states in the federal government. You say yourself that the Senate was designed to allow "small states an equal standing with larger states". That's exactly true: it was to represent the states' interests!
The problem with Senators in the US is that they are elected. Thus, they really serve no purpose at all. They are just another copy of the lower house.
While the idea of an unelected house may seem un-democratic, it has many attributes that make it a much better "buffer" than an elected upper house. Since the body appointing the members is of a particular party, they will appoint people who favor their views. however, since a member of Senate serves for life, over the long term, rather than have one viewpoint in majority, the Senate will always have a huge diversity of opinions. Thus, you will likely *never* have a situation where one viewpoint controls both the lower, upper, and executive, branches of government.
You and I are in total agreement. Taking the Senate out of our direct control was for our own good even if the Progressives (what a contradictory name) didn't see it.
The legislatures still had to agree on who to appoint, too, and it made the selection process unique to each state. Could be a simple majority, could be a super-majority. This has the benefit of Senators doing what they think is right because they don't know what the legislature will look like in 6 years. They *had* to try and keep everyone happy instead of relying on gerrymandered districts.
It's just another layer of "check and balance" that's been built into this system. I'm not surprised that you (and I imagine many like-minded people) want to throw it out as I'm sure it seems arcane, but you must more carefully consider it. A lot of people said the same thing about US Senators, that the people should be trusted to choose them directly instead of letting the legislatures choose them. Are we better off now with direct election of Senators, or worse off?
I'd tend to say that we are worse off now. Senators operate largely on the same basis as the House: whoever brings home the most bacon gets re-elected. It also means the legislative body represents the interests of the people only and not of the states. While the Founders were distrustful of power and authority, there were also distrustful of allowing direct control of all government by the people as a whole.
I think you need to do a little reconsidering of your position. After having read on several of the Founders, I doubt they were more concerned with election fraud than direct elections.
I can see it already. "Plug in this miracle of a bug-zapper outside your home and it will generate power while it clears away those annoying pests!" Seriously, though, that would be a kinda cool gadget to have around. Maybe they could also branch out into ant and roach traps. Pest control AND micropower in one convenient device.
Geeze. I can't figure out if I'm being silly or serious now.
This is exactly what the electoral college is designed for, as a check against a popularly-elected president that horrifies Congress. It's usually in the best interests of the electors to go with the flow and approve who the voters choose, but it exists in case the next Hitler comes along so that even with a popular vote such a person would not come to power. (No, I don't think anyone running is the next Hitler, but hyperbole is great for driving points home.)
I use the predictive text for SMS on my Ericsson phone, and I'm always amazed at how accurate it is. I think this is a good thing for the Blackberry to reduce the size and cost of their devices and drive penetration. (Fewer keys = fewer moving parts = less breakage)
With everything that new cell phones do, though, I'm curious as to how Blackberry devices differentiate themselves. (I've never used one myself.) Mine can send and receive e-mail messages and it was a cheapo T226. Granted, it can only handle short messages and the screen isn't that large, but I imagine that's enough for most people that want e-mail on the go.
That's the first thing I thought of. Using these things in large security systems to keep archives would seem to be the most likely application.
I think that the basis of a presidential debate should be viability. If a candidate will be on the ballot in enough states for it to be possible of a victory in the electoral college, then they should be let in. Right now, that includes Bush, Kerry, Badnarik, Cobb and Peroutka. Nader, though well-known, doesn't have a chance at an electoral victory due to ballot access issues.
If a debate stays focused on a few key issues and enforces strict time limits, they should be able to whip through 5-6 big issues in a 2-hour debate.
Three hours after the close of the polls here in Vegas, we still had single-digit reporting of precincts. It wasn't until this morning (presumably while I slept) that the county clerk had 100% reporting. It makes me wonder if they made the machines out of pocket calculators. Even a 286 could tally that stuff faster.
I've done my searching around in Win2K without any luck. Your mileage in other operating systems may vary.
I hated my last job. The bosses were always jerks to everyone, they engaged in shady business practices and I never saw a raise even though I busted my butt to keep the place afloat when we were understaffed and turning over employees like flapjacks. I left on pretty amicable terms...
That is, right up until I went down to the US Bankruptcy courts and the IRS to report that the owner was skimming cash to avoid paying back his creditors. And also dropped a few notes to the FBI about their sex tourism business bussing guys down to Mexico and finding them hookers. And dropping a few lines to the FTC about unsolicited junk faxing. And letting their largest clients know just how much mark-up they were paying. And...
They probably don't know it was me, as they left a long string of disgruntled employees. Whenever I think about it, I just smile smugly, wondering how much jail time they'll end up with.
Most spam uses bad return addresses anyway. You could simply have it setup so that your e-mail system could initiate a reply in a fashion similar to the way bounces are generated. If it gets any message other than OK, it rejects the message before delivery.
Spammers would naturally move to using real addresses they culled from other sources, but it's a good first step that I believe would eliminate the vast majority of current spam.
I'll have to pick one of those up. I've been using a $20 Gamepad Pro from Gravis that's been okay, except it's REALLY easy to accidentally hit the diagonals. I really do like the 4-way D-pad much better for NES and SNES emulation, otherwise I end up getting frustrated when my finger isn't dead center and I go in some oddball direction.
... the spam will keep flowing. I guess the spammers themselves aren't the only ones raking in the green. I would imagine that the prospect of losing so much face to their largest clients is probably the only thing that got them to consider fixing the problem. If I happened to operate a large company, I wouldn't want to be associated with a company that's a spam factory.