Actually, I just realized you *could* be arrested after only one "anti-social" sign of disrespect. Apparently, the courts issued a pre-emptive ASBO for the entire town of Skegness, allowing the police to imprison anyone (for up to six months) whom they deemed disruptive even if they haven't actually broken any laws. (Explicitly included was the power to disperse any "crowd" consisting of two or more people.)
I don't see what's stopping them from issuing a similar ASBO covering the entire camera network...
Well, given the use of those neat little ASBOs the Brits are so fond of (which basically allow the courts to arbitrarily criminalize ANY "anti-social" behavior), it's safe to say that any flagrant display of disrespect can be grounds for imprisonment (though you'd have to do twice--once for the ASBO to be issued, and once again to be arrested as a violator of the ASBO.) It likely comes down to the whim of the camera operator as to whether or not this happens.
I'd explain in detail why this is such an obscenely bad thing, but I just don't have the energy. Seems like English-speaking countries in general are a bad place to live if you enjoy personal freedoms (and no, I'm not comforted by the fact that it's much worse in most Arabic speaking countries. This isn't a fucking playground; "they started it!" isn't a valid excuse.)
He wasn't stealing those; the plaintiff's server was programmed to SERVE HIM that content. If you build a robot and program it to give all of the furniture in your house away, you can't turn around and call it theft when your neighbors accept it. Stupidity is no excuse; if this guy didn't want his data being "stolen" then he should not have GIVEN IT AWAY. There are perfectly acceptable, widespread means of access restrictions he could have implemented...
Yeah, you keep believing that. Dumbass. I've read DOZENS of studies that show the beneficial effects of alcohol--even showing that despite "killing brain cells" it actually delays the onset of age-related cognative decline (in women anyway--they're testing to see if the same holds true for men.) And no, it's not JUST red wine--they've found beneficial effects from beer and hard liquor as well.
a cup of it pure will kill you
1. Bullshit. That's only the equivalent of 15 shots. (A shot glass is 1.5 fluid ounces. One cup is 8 fluid ounces. Hard liquor is usually 80 proof/40% alcohol. Do the math--15 shots is the equivalent of one cup of pure alcohol.) The vast majority of the population can take 15 shots without dying. Taken by someone with a moderate alcohol tolerance while on a full stomach over the course of, say, an hour, they might be able to do without even passing out.
2. Even if it was true, it doesn't matter. A cup of pure salt is probably just as harmful to your health as pure alcohol--perhaps moreso. And hey, salt kills many kinds of bateria on contact AND it causes that same burning sensation! Yet, it would be retarded (actually quite fatal) to argue that we shouldn't eat any salt at all. The article is about MODERATE DRINKING, not downing 15 shots a day. They even acknowledge the fact that yes, heavy drinking does kill you faster. But moderate drinking does the opposite, and every study I've read confirms this fact. If you want to claim otherwise, why don't you cite your sources?
Also, the woman suffered THIRD DEGREE BURNS on her genitals. I dunno about you guys, but if I slip up and spill some coffee on my lap I don't expect the resulting discomfort to actually require fucking SKIN GRAFTS.
They always seem to leave that bit out when they talk about the "stupid woman who sued McDonald's for spilling hot coffee on herself." If I had to get fucking skin grafts for my penis, I'd sue McDonald's, too.
...what "ends" are you referring to? A shitty economy? MORE pissed-off Arabs willing to sacrifice themselves in order to avenge their loved ones? (50,429 to 55,926 CIVILIAN DEATHS as compiled from English-language media reports by the Iraq Body Count project. That's over 10x the number of USA civilians killed on 9/11.) Capture of the non-existent weapons of mass destruction? The assassination/capture of Osama that still hasn't happened? The creation of a horribly UNSTABLE, violent Iraqi state?
Why don't you name one fucking good thing that's come of this entire fucking ball of shit and try and convince me it's because we tortured "terrorists".
They CHOOSE not to look at it because they think it's gross and crude,
Not to rain on your parade or anything (because I totally agree with your post), but I think there are very, very few people in this world that honestly find ALL pornography (this means all art intended to sexually arouse--this includes soft core and artistic stuff) completely unappealing. My sister can launch into a very convincing anti-porn tirade, but played with her laptop enough times to figure out that she's a huge yaoi fan.
A lot of people out there have been exposed to nothing but "mainstream", plastic, horrible crap only to find out how wonderful and full of joy porn can be from a site like, say, Abby Winters. If sex interests you at all, then there is some form of pornography out there that will also interest you. People who claim otherwise either 1. Have absolutely no imagination whatsoever or 2. Are in deep denial.
Anyway I'm not advocating that you NOT "talk to your kids"--by all means, do!--just don't delude yourself into thinking that they're going to be completely open and honest with you about their opinions on sex and masturbation and porn.
On the contrary, I've spent some wonderful, high-quality time watching porn together with my girlfriend (probably wife, in a couple years.) Usually, it's her idea. I find it to be a far more worthwhile way to spend a couple hours than, say, watching the latest insipid crap that Hollywood has cranked out.
Just what is wrong with saying that he respects Peter Pan just as much as the Bible? I wager that many Christians would say the same about Peter Pan and the Koran.
Rejection of Christianity does not automatically make you a bigot or a whiney 13 year old. Rejection of Christianity does indeed usually include putting it on the status of, say, Aesop's Fables--some halfway interesting moral allegory, but riddled with dangerously questionable moral statements and encased in an allegorical story that absolutely was not meant to be taken seriously.
Rejection of Christianity doesn't mean that you are required to hate all Christians or actively work against them; it just means that you've analyzed their beliefs and rejected them. Just what is wrong with that? Why do I have to "respect" beliefs that I disagree with in the strongest possible terms (young earth, creationism, omnipotent god that could save me if he wanted to but instead has apparently damned me to hell by giving me a rational mind, omnipotent God that created evil/allowed it to happen (if he's truly omnipotent, THEN IT'S THE SAME THING, PEOPLE!) and yet accepts no responsibility for it, anti-homosexuality, anti-sex in general, condoned/encouraged hatred, etc.) ?
No, sorry, it's just plain irresponsible and dishonest for me to pretend to respect beliefs that I despise. As I said in another reply, do you "respect" the beliefs of an African tribal who thinks that all girls must have their clitorises cut off at a young age? Or the geocentric beliefs that the Catholic church advocated for many hundreds of years to the detriment of free thinkers everywhere (who knows how far Galileo would have gotten? Perhaps he would have invented calculus many decades before Newton did...) Or the amoral beliefs of a pure survival-of-the-fittest anarchist? Or how about the beliefs of a terrorist suicide bomber? Can I criticize those beliefs, or would I be branded a bigot or a 13 year old for that, too?
There are some specific Christian beliefs that I do respect... the love and kindness bits, mostly. But THEY sure as fuck don't respect ME and my polygamous activities (yeah, I've had threesomes. With my longtime girlfriend whom I love dearly and will marry some day. Cue the jokes...) so why should I respect THEIR backwards, love-hating beliefs? I don't. I won't pretend to. And I'd rather be called a bigot or a 13 year old than to bow down and say it's OK to do or say something that I think is completely wrong.
Don't get me wrong; I don't begrudge them of their *right* to do it in an (allegedly) free country such as this... as the saying goes, I would die to protect their right to do so. But this kind of "respect" people like you are advocating is the absolute DEATH of rationality and progress...
The Bible is an entertaining story, but it's not any more important or valuable than other myths, such as the Odyssey, and anyone who views it as being literally truthful is a damn fool. There, that's my opinion
And I'm an amoral, lecherous, unwitting tool of Satan. That's their opinion.
As long as we're willing to tolerate each other (note that "tolerate" is not the same thing as "respect") and play nicely, neither of these opinions qualify as bigotry.
Why do I have to respect Christian beliefs? Sorry, but they're ridiculous, just as a serious belief in the Flying Spaghetti monster is ridiculous. "Ridiculous" is really an oversimplification: they're cruel, xenophobic, self-destructive, anti-love, anti-science... (no, this doesn't apply to every interpretation of the Bible, just the more popular ones in America today. Even the more "civilized" interpretations leave a lot to be desired.)
Why am I required to respect such beliefs? Do YOU respect the beliefs of a Satanist who believes in absolute anarchy, amorality, and survival of the fittest?
The Bible is a collection of myths, and a myth is nothing more than a fancy (i.e. pretentious) fairy tale. I am not arguing for a Christian genocide. I do not go out of my way to discriminate against Christians (unless one says something specific to piss me off, e.g. ranting about how homosexuality should be re-criminalized.) I don't burn crosses on their lawn. I believe that most Christian beliefs are morally, socially, emotionally, and/or intellectually harmful. What's wrong with that? Just where the FUCK do you get off trying to call me a bigot?
Do you hesitate to criticize religious/cultural beliefs that state that a girl's clitoris must be cut off at an early age? Or criticize a Biblically-founded belief in a geocentric universe?
The New Testament is really no different than the Odyssey or even Aesop's Fables; THAT is what the GP was saying. That isn't bigotry; it's a very reasonable opinion. Now, calling him a bigot; attacking anyone who DARES question YOUR favorite myth... now that just might qualify as bigotry.
Ironic that you should choose that line to say it "peaked" with when, in fact, it was very obviously ripped off from 1984. Don't get me wrong, I love ST:TNG, but (Stewart's nice acting notwithstanding) that particular scene was maybe 1/10 as powerful and insidious as the original scene from Orwell's classic.
I dunno about that. Seems to me that if the government and/or private sector was willing to invest a few hundred billion dollars, we could construct arbitrarily large solar/wind farms out in the middle of nowhere. There's also tidal power, geothermal power, hydro power, and nuclear power (I know we haven't built any new reactors in a while due to public hysteria, but if it was built 100+ miles away from the nearest heavily populated area...) All of these energy production types are limited by geography (e.g. wind and hydro and geothermal power can't be set up just *anywhere*) and/or objection by the local residents. You can't overcome these limitations via powerlines--it would be just too damn costly to maintain. However, if you can figure out a way of storing the eletricity for a reasonable length of time, suddenly the distance issues becomes much less problematic. There is also an even greater upside to energy storage vs. powerline transmission--you can run your generations at full capacity, 100% of the time in order to build up a surplus. Yes, you lose a lot of energy in the storage process (whether you're storing the energy via hydrogen electrolysis or some other method) but you gain efficiency in the sense that your power plant designs can be optimized to run at full strength 100% of the time, which is something our current plants are not designed for. Nuclear, in particular, can be "overclocked" pretty significantly.
Now, I'm not arguing that hydrogen is the most efficient form of energy storage at our disposal, but I do think that energy storage is a lot more important than energy production. There are plenty of renewable/non-polluting/non-fossil fuel options at our disposal; more than enough to supply the entire country's energy needs, I'd wager. Figure out a way to cheaply mass-produce an efficient, low-maintenance windmill (e.g. slow moving so there are less dead birds) and you can just rack 'em up in the windy areas of the country. Take the U and Pu out of our decommisioned nuclear warheads, build some reactors out in the middle of Montana and you'll be cranking out the petawatts in no time. Cover the deserts with solar plants. Tap every last one of our geothermal vents.
Honestly, though I'm not arguing that hydrogen is the most efficient solution, no one has yet proposed a better non-polluting, renewable storage and I just don't see how the inefficiency of hydrogen will get in the way. Given a few specially-designed high-output "power farms", we simply don't NEED to be efficient. This isn't something that's going to happen tomorrow--we need to design cost-effective high-output power plants and we need to design the large-scale electrolysis farms designed to utilize every last watt of power and most importantly, we need billions (if not trillions) to build 'em. Once built, though, hydrogen can indeed become a very cheap, portable power source. 25% storage efficiency won't matter--do our current systems run at 100% power output all the time? HELL no. So we probably have plenty of eletricity to spare now, even without building specialized, high-output power farms.
And it's not like we're going to run out of water anytime soon...
I thought the idea was somewhat far-fetched, too... that is, until I was infected by Blaster wiithin minutes of my first boot, before I had a chance to download the service packs or a firewall (my router was acting up, so I was directly plugged into the cable modem.) So yeah, it happens, and I don't think I'm the only one it's happened to, either...
wtf? So maybe there wouldn't be an actual explosion unless the beam was somehow focused on a single point, but the fact remains the energy output of the beam is NOT trivial, it CAN cause damage to the accelerator wall because the total energy output is "333 MJ per ring" which is hella more than "only one ten-thousandth of a joule", and in order to avoid damage to the accelerator they have to dump that beam into a graphite block, which apparently must be carefully designed and magnetically shielded to ensure it doesn't get too hot. Maybe I was dramatizing it a bit, but the beam most certainly does have enough energy to cause damaging macroscopic effects.
Congradulations, you've managed to get my mostly-informative post modded down and your utter-bullshit post modded up. I don't need the karma; I just wanted people to know that they could help...
Well, I'm paraphrasing an uncited Wikipedia article. Slightly better than making it up, but (possibly) not by much. From the article:
"The size of the LHC constitutes an exceptional engineering challenge with unique safety issues. While running, the total energy stored in the magnets is 10 GJ, and in the beam, 725 MJ. Loss of only 107 of the beam is sufficient to quench a superconducting magnet, while the beam dump must discharge an energy equivalent to a considerable quantity of explosives."
This is an absolutely amazing project. Forget the space program; forget SETI--if this thing works as designed, pure science will gain more in 2008 than it did in the previous decade. But, they need your help! The energy output for this thing is just incredible that if an entire beam were to go off-course and hit the wall of the accelerator, there would be a rather sizable explosion. Even smaller errors can add up, damaging the accelerator over time. The LHC@home project lets you donate your spare CPU cycles to help calibrate the machine in order to minimize the risk of accidental wall collisions. Come on, I know there must be some physics geeks out there... show your support! Given the sorry state of pure science research in the USA, this may be your only chance...
I'm not sure if that really qualifies as "ironic", considering Hawking repeatedly and purposefully bets against his own theories with that other "famous researcher" (his longtime friend/colleague, Roger Penrose.) Hawking says it's so he'll have a consolation prize if it turns out he's wrong.
Nah, black holes are some of the most important/interesting things in universe, and I think it was some pretty important stuff Hawking figured out (e.g., Hawking radiation.) I think he also did some important stuff relating to the big bang... not sure, though. His works aren't on the same earth-shaking level as Einstein, Galileo, and Newton, but I think perhaps he is on the same level as, say, Teller... perhaps even Bohr. People do pay him too much attention (to the detriment of physicists who have done more) due to his illness, but given all he's been through it's hard to begrudge him that. Again, he's done some very important work about some of the most mysterious and talked-about phenomena in the universe. For that, I'm pretty sure history will remember him.
Could be wrong, but I don't think Hawking has made any major breakthroughs since the mid-70s. That said, though some people consider him to be overrated due to his condition and his pop science books, I think the work he did with Penrose in the 70s is very much worthy of recognition.
Even if Microsoft manages to pull off a spectacular legal coup d'état, I predict that their success in European and Asian courts will be... less than spectacular. Linux isn't going away anytime soon, and when it does go away it will be for technical reasons (i.e. 100+ years from now they finally rewrite the OS from scratch), not legal reasons.
Seriously, are you guys going to explain your bizarre definition of "censorship" that includes firewall blocking but excludes forcibly removing the website? I'm genuinely curious. You seem to be saying that the government needs to be telepathic; that unless they prevent the website from ever coming into existence, it isn't censorship.
"When the site was closed in October last year, it contained more than 9 million pornographic images and articles, the police said." [emphasis mine]
This is censorship in its simplest form. The fact that the photos were available for a while before being censored does not change the fact that they were, ultimately, censored. Whereas they were once accessible, now they have been rendered inaccessible by the authorities. That's the textbook definition of censorship; I don't know how I can make it any clearer. Whether or not the owner was arrested doesn't matter at all; the government shutting down the website was an act of censorship, plain and simple.
I'm pretty sure that the term "censorship" has been around long before there was electronic media of any kind. Back then, if you wanted to censor something you had to physically stop it from being published, and that is precisely what has happened here. The internet didn't magically redefine the meaning of censorship; it only introduced new methods of it which didn't necessitate brute force. This is merely the older, more brutal, more effective form of censorship.
Strictly speaking, the term "censorship" only refers to banning the publication of material, not prosecuting people.
Um, I'm pretty sure they confiscate/destroy the porn after seizing it. How is that not a ban on publication?
Blocking an illegal child porn site with filters and blacklists is censorship. Going after the people running the site is law enforcement.
I haven't RTFAed, but I'm pretty sure that they confiscated/destroyed the porn and/or took down the guy's site. That's the same thing as blocking publication.
Of course, common usage of the word now tends to refer to both.
Probably because you pretty much NEVER see "law enforcement" (as you call it) without accompanying censorship. If someone raids a sex shop (as happened in Georgia a few years back), do they just arrest the owner or do they also confiscate the contraband? You're right in implying that censorship can exist as distinct from law enforcement, but the opposite isn't true--law enforcement of this type ALWAYS involves accompanying censorship. I guarantee you those 9 million images won't be accessible anymore; they have been... wait for it now... censored!
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I just realized you *could* be arrested after only one "anti-social" sign of disrespect. Apparently, the courts issued a pre-emptive ASBO for the entire town of Skegness, allowing the police to imprison anyone (for up to six months) whom they deemed disruptive even if they haven't actually broken any laws. (Explicitly included was the power to disperse any "crowd" consisting of two or more people.)
I don't see what's stopping them from issuing a similar ASBO covering the entire camera network...
Well, given the use of those neat little ASBOs the Brits are so fond of (which basically allow the courts to arbitrarily criminalize ANY "anti-social" behavior), it's safe to say that any flagrant display of disrespect can be grounds for imprisonment (though you'd have to do twice--once for the ASBO to be issued, and once again to be arrested as a violator of the ASBO.) It likely comes down to the whim of the camera operator as to whether or not this happens.
I'd explain in detail why this is such an obscenely bad thing, but I just don't have the energy. Seems like English-speaking countries in general are a bad place to live if you enjoy personal freedoms (and no, I'm not comforted by the fact that it's much worse in most Arabic speaking countries. This isn't a fucking playground; "they started it!" isn't a valid excuse.)
He wasn't stealing those; the plaintiff's server was programmed to SERVE HIM that content. If you build a robot and program it to give all of the furniture in your house away, you can't turn around and call it theft when your neighbors accept it. Stupidity is no excuse; if this guy didn't want his data being "stolen" then he should not have GIVEN IT AWAY. There are perfectly acceptable, widespread means of access restrictions he could have implemented...
Yeah, you keep believing that. Dumbass. I've read DOZENS of studies that show the beneficial effects of alcohol--even showing that despite "killing brain cells" it actually delays the onset of age-related cognative decline (in women anyway--they're testing to see if the same holds true for men.) And no, it's not JUST red wine--they've found beneficial effects from beer and hard liquor as well.
a cup of it pure will kill you 1. Bullshit. That's only the equivalent of 15 shots. (A shot glass is 1.5 fluid ounces. One cup is 8 fluid ounces. Hard liquor is usually 80 proof/40% alcohol. Do the math--15 shots is the equivalent of one cup of pure alcohol.) The vast majority of the population can take 15 shots without dying. Taken by someone with a moderate alcohol tolerance while on a full stomach over the course of, say, an hour, they might be able to do without even passing out.
2. Even if it was true, it doesn't matter. A cup of pure salt is probably just as harmful to your health as pure alcohol--perhaps moreso. And hey, salt kills many kinds of bateria on contact AND it causes that same burning sensation! Yet, it would be retarded (actually quite fatal) to argue that we shouldn't eat any salt at all. The article is about MODERATE DRINKING, not downing 15 shots a day. They even acknowledge the fact that yes, heavy drinking does kill you faster. But moderate drinking does the opposite, and every study I've read confirms this fact. If you want to claim otherwise, why don't you cite your sources?
Also, the woman suffered THIRD DEGREE BURNS on her genitals. I dunno about you guys, but if I slip up and spill some coffee on my lap I don't expect the resulting discomfort to actually require fucking SKIN GRAFTS.
They always seem to leave that bit out when they talk about the "stupid woman who sued McDonald's for spilling hot coffee on herself." If I had to get fucking skin grafts for my penis, I'd sue McDonald's, too.
...what "ends" are you referring to? A shitty economy? MORE pissed-off Arabs willing to sacrifice themselves in order to avenge their loved ones? (50,429 to 55,926 CIVILIAN DEATHS as compiled from English-language media reports by the Iraq Body Count project. That's over 10x the number of USA civilians killed on 9/11.) Capture of the non-existent weapons of mass destruction? The assassination/capture of Osama that still hasn't happened? The creation of a horribly UNSTABLE, violent Iraqi state?
Why don't you name one fucking good thing that's come of this entire fucking ball of shit and try and convince me it's because we tortured "terrorists".
They CHOOSE not to look at it because they think it's gross and crude,
Not to rain on your parade or anything (because I totally agree with your post), but I think there are very, very few people in this world that honestly find ALL pornography (this means all art intended to sexually arouse--this includes soft core and artistic stuff) completely unappealing. My sister can launch into a very convincing anti-porn tirade, but played with her laptop enough times to figure out that she's a huge yaoi fan.
A lot of people out there have been exposed to nothing but "mainstream", plastic, horrible crap only to find out how wonderful and full of joy porn can be from a site like, say, Abby Winters. If sex interests you at all, then there is some form of pornography out there that will also interest you. People who claim otherwise either 1. Have absolutely no imagination whatsoever or 2. Are in deep denial.
Anyway I'm not advocating that you NOT "talk to your kids"--by all means, do!--just don't delude yourself into thinking that they're going to be completely open and honest with you about their opinions on sex and masturbation and porn.
shouldn't that be a naked nine year old girl?
*ducks*
On the contrary, I've spent some wonderful, high-quality time watching porn together with my girlfriend (probably wife, in a couple years.) Usually, it's her idea. I find it to be a far more worthwhile way to spend a couple hours than, say, watching the latest insipid crap that Hollywood has cranked out.
Just what is wrong with saying that he respects Peter Pan just as much as the Bible? I wager that many Christians would say the same about Peter Pan and the Koran.
Rejection of Christianity does not automatically make you a bigot or a whiney 13 year old. Rejection of Christianity does indeed usually include putting it on the status of, say, Aesop's Fables--some halfway interesting moral allegory, but riddled with dangerously questionable moral statements and encased in an allegorical story that absolutely was not meant to be taken seriously.
Rejection of Christianity doesn't mean that you are required to hate all Christians or actively work against them; it just means that you've analyzed their beliefs and rejected them. Just what is wrong with that? Why do I have to "respect" beliefs that I disagree with in the strongest possible terms (young earth, creationism, omnipotent god that could save me if he wanted to but instead has apparently damned me to hell by giving me a rational mind, omnipotent God that created evil/allowed it to happen (if he's truly omnipotent, THEN IT'S THE SAME THING, PEOPLE!) and yet accepts no responsibility for it, anti-homosexuality, anti-sex in general, condoned/encouraged hatred, etc.) ?
No, sorry, it's just plain irresponsible and dishonest for me to pretend to respect beliefs that I despise. As I said in another reply, do you "respect" the beliefs of an African tribal who thinks that all girls must have their clitorises cut off at a young age? Or the geocentric beliefs that the Catholic church advocated for many hundreds of years to the detriment of free thinkers everywhere (who knows how far Galileo would have gotten? Perhaps he would have invented calculus many decades before Newton did...) Or the amoral beliefs of a pure survival-of-the-fittest anarchist? Or how about the beliefs of a terrorist suicide bomber? Can I criticize those beliefs, or would I be branded a bigot or a 13 year old for that, too?
There are some specific Christian beliefs that I do respect... the love and kindness bits, mostly. But THEY sure as fuck don't respect ME and my polygamous activities (yeah, I've had threesomes. With my longtime girlfriend whom I love dearly and will marry some day. Cue the jokes...) so why should I respect THEIR backwards, love-hating beliefs? I don't. I won't pretend to. And I'd rather be called a bigot or a 13 year old than to bow down and say it's OK to do or say something that I think is completely wrong.
Don't get me wrong; I don't begrudge them of their *right* to do it in an (allegedly) free country such as this... as the saying goes, I would die to protect their right to do so. But this kind of "respect" people like you are advocating is the absolute DEATH of rationality and progress...
The Bible is an entertaining story, but it's not any more important or valuable than other myths, such as the Odyssey, and anyone who views it as being literally truthful is a damn fool. There, that's my opinion
And I'm an amoral, lecherous, unwitting tool of Satan. That's their opinion.
As long as we're willing to tolerate each other (note that "tolerate" is not the same thing as "respect") and play nicely, neither of these opinions qualify as bigotry.
Why do I have to respect Christian beliefs? Sorry, but they're ridiculous, just as a serious belief in the Flying Spaghetti monster is ridiculous. "Ridiculous" is really an oversimplification: they're cruel, xenophobic, self-destructive, anti-love, anti-science... (no, this doesn't apply to every interpretation of the Bible, just the more popular ones in America today. Even the more "civilized" interpretations leave a lot to be desired.)
Why am I required to respect such beliefs? Do YOU respect the beliefs of a Satanist who believes in absolute anarchy, amorality, and survival of the fittest?
The Bible is a collection of myths, and a myth is nothing more than a fancy (i.e. pretentious) fairy tale. I am not arguing for a Christian genocide. I do not go out of my way to discriminate against Christians (unless one says something specific to piss me off, e.g. ranting about how homosexuality should be re-criminalized.) I don't burn crosses on their lawn. I believe that most Christian beliefs are morally, socially, emotionally, and/or intellectually harmful. What's wrong with that? Just where the FUCK do you get off trying to call me a bigot?
Do you hesitate to criticize religious/cultural beliefs that state that a girl's clitoris must be cut off at an early age? Or criticize a Biblically-founded belief in a geocentric universe?
The New Testament is really no different than the Odyssey or even Aesop's Fables; THAT is what the GP was saying. That isn't bigotry; it's a very reasonable opinion. Now, calling him a bigot; attacking anyone who DARES question YOUR favorite myth... now that just might qualify as bigotry.
Ironic that you should choose that line to say it "peaked" with when, in fact, it was very obviously ripped off from 1984. Don't get me wrong, I love ST:TNG, but (Stewart's nice acting notwithstanding) that particular scene was maybe 1/10 as powerful and insidious as the original scene from Orwell's classic.
I dunno about that. Seems to me that if the government and/or private sector was willing to invest a few hundred billion dollars, we could construct arbitrarily large solar/wind farms out in the middle of nowhere. There's also tidal power, geothermal power, hydro power, and nuclear power (I know we haven't built any new reactors in a while due to public hysteria, but if it was built 100+ miles away from the nearest heavily populated area...) All of these energy production types are limited by geography (e.g. wind and hydro and geothermal power can't be set up just *anywhere*) and/or objection by the local residents. You can't overcome these limitations via powerlines--it would be just too damn costly to maintain. However, if you can figure out a way of storing the eletricity for a reasonable length of time, suddenly the distance issues becomes much less problematic. There is also an even greater upside to energy storage vs. powerline transmission--you can run your generations at full capacity, 100% of the time in order to build up a surplus. Yes, you lose a lot of energy in the storage process (whether you're storing the energy via hydrogen electrolysis or some other method) but you gain efficiency in the sense that your power plant designs can be optimized to run at full strength 100% of the time, which is something our current plants are not designed for. Nuclear, in particular, can be "overclocked" pretty significantly.
Now, I'm not arguing that hydrogen is the most efficient form of energy storage at our disposal, but I do think that energy storage is a lot more important than energy production. There are plenty of renewable/non-polluting/non-fossil fuel options at our disposal; more than enough to supply the entire country's energy needs, I'd wager. Figure out a way to cheaply mass-produce an efficient, low-maintenance windmill (e.g. slow moving so there are less dead birds) and you can just rack 'em up in the windy areas of the country. Take the U and Pu out of our decommisioned nuclear warheads, build some reactors out in the middle of Montana and you'll be cranking out the petawatts in no time. Cover the deserts with solar plants. Tap every last one of our geothermal vents.
Honestly, though I'm not arguing that hydrogen is the most efficient solution, no one has yet proposed a better non-polluting, renewable storage and I just don't see how the inefficiency of hydrogen will get in the way. Given a few specially-designed high-output "power farms", we simply don't NEED to be efficient. This isn't something that's going to happen tomorrow--we need to design cost-effective high-output power plants and we need to design the large-scale electrolysis farms designed to utilize every last watt of power and most importantly, we need billions (if not trillions) to build 'em. Once built, though, hydrogen can indeed become a very cheap, portable power source. 25% storage efficiency won't matter--do our current systems run at 100% power output all the time? HELL no. So we probably have plenty of eletricity to spare now, even without building specialized, high-output power farms.
And it's not like we're going to run out of water anytime soon...
I thought the idea was somewhat far-fetched, too... that is, until I was infected by Blaster wiithin minutes of my first boot, before I had a chance to download the service packs or a firewall (my router was acting up, so I was directly plugged into the cable modem.) So yeah, it happens, and I don't think I'm the only one it's happened to, either...
wtf? So maybe there wouldn't be an actual explosion unless the beam was somehow focused on a single point, but the fact remains the energy output of the beam is NOT trivial, it CAN cause damage to the accelerator wall because the total energy output is "333 MJ per ring" which is hella more than "only one ten-thousandth of a joule", and in order to avoid damage to the accelerator they have to dump that beam into a graphite block, which apparently must be carefully designed and magnetically shielded to ensure it doesn't get too hot. Maybe I was dramatizing it a bit, but the beam most certainly does have enough energy to cause damaging macroscopic effects.
Congradulations, you've managed to get my mostly-informative post modded down and your utter-bullshit post modded up. I don't need the karma; I just wanted people to know that they could help...
Well, I'm paraphrasing an uncited Wikipedia article. Slightly better than making it up, but (possibly) not by much. From the article:
"The size of the LHC constitutes an exceptional engineering challenge with unique safety issues. While running, the total energy stored in the magnets is 10 GJ, and in the beam, 725 MJ. Loss of only 107 of the beam is sufficient to quench a superconducting magnet, while the beam dump must discharge an energy equivalent to a considerable quantity of explosives."
This is an absolutely amazing project. Forget the space program; forget SETI--if this thing works as designed, pure science will gain more in 2008 than it did in the previous decade. But, they need your help! The energy output for this thing is just incredible that if an entire beam were to go off-course and hit the wall of the accelerator, there would be a rather sizable explosion. Even smaller errors can add up, damaging the accelerator over time. The LHC@home project lets you donate your spare CPU cycles to help calibrate the machine in order to minimize the risk of accidental wall collisions. Come on, I know there must be some physics geeks out there... show your support! Given the sorry state of pure science research in the USA, this may be your only chance...
I'm not sure if that really qualifies as "ironic", considering Hawking repeatedly and purposefully bets against his own theories with that other "famous researcher" (his longtime friend/colleague, Roger Penrose.) Hawking says it's so he'll have a consolation prize if it turns out he's wrong.
Nah, black holes are some of the most important/interesting things in universe, and I think it was some pretty important stuff Hawking figured out (e.g., Hawking radiation.) I think he also did some important stuff relating to the big bang... not sure, though. His works aren't on the same earth-shaking level as Einstein, Galileo, and Newton, but I think perhaps he is on the same level as, say, Teller... perhaps even Bohr. People do pay him too much attention (to the detriment of physicists who have done more) due to his illness, but given all he's been through it's hard to begrudge him that. Again, he's done some very important work about some of the most mysterious and talked-about phenomena in the universe. For that, I'm pretty sure history will remember him.
Could be wrong, but I don't think Hawking has made any major breakthroughs since the mid-70s. That said, though some people consider him to be overrated due to his condition and his pop science books, I think the work he did with Penrose in the 70s is very much worthy of recognition.
Even if Microsoft manages to pull off a spectacular legal coup d'état, I predict that their success in European and Asian courts will be... less than spectacular. Linux isn't going away anytime soon, and when it does go away it will be for technical reasons (i.e. 100+ years from now they finally rewrite the OS from scratch), not legal reasons.
Seriously, are you guys going to explain your bizarre definition of "censorship" that includes firewall blocking but excludes forcibly removing the website? I'm genuinely curious. You seem to be saying that the government needs to be telepathic; that unless they prevent the website from ever coming into existence, it isn't censorship.
From TFA:
" When the site was closed in October last year, it contained more than 9 million pornographic images and articles, the police said." [emphasis mine]
This is censorship in its simplest form. The fact that the photos were available for a while before being censored does not change the fact that they were, ultimately, censored. Whereas they were once accessible, now they have been rendered inaccessible by the authorities. That's the textbook definition of censorship; I don't know how I can make it any clearer. Whether or not the owner was arrested doesn't matter at all; the government shutting down the website was an act of censorship, plain and simple.
I'm pretty sure that the term "censorship" has been around long before there was electronic media of any kind. Back then, if you wanted to censor something you had to physically stop it from being published, and that is precisely what has happened here. The internet didn't magically redefine the meaning of censorship; it only introduced new methods of it which didn't necessitate brute force. This is merely the older, more brutal, more effective form of censorship.
Strictly speaking, the term "censorship" only refers to banning the publication of material, not prosecuting people.
Um, I'm pretty sure they confiscate/destroy the porn after seizing it. How is that not a ban on publication?
Blocking an illegal child porn site with filters and blacklists is censorship. Going after the people running the site is law enforcement.
I haven't RTFAed, but I'm pretty sure that they confiscated/destroyed the porn and/or took down the guy's site. That's the same thing as blocking publication.
Of course, common usage of the word now tends to refer to both.
Probably because you pretty much NEVER see "law enforcement" (as you call it) without accompanying censorship. If someone raids a sex shop (as happened in Georgia a few years back), do they just arrest the owner or do they also confiscate the contraband? You're right in implying that censorship can exist as distinct from law enforcement, but the opposite isn't true--law enforcement of this type ALWAYS involves accompanying censorship. I guarantee you those 9 million images won't be accessible anymore; they have been... wait for it now... censored!