The US government outright refused to allow the UN to monitor the 2004 election. They won't let any monitoring happen at all, no matter what the citizens want.
Can you imagine the government's reaction if Venezuela refused election monitoring?
That's what this is: a serious discussion about string theory's strengths and weaknesses. String theory has been given its head to produce something testable (making it earn its moniker of "theory"). It hasn't. It has remained an interesting mathematical investigation of abstract topology, which (as others have pointed out) has been interesting in its own right.
However, until *some*body comes up with a way of testing string theory, there is no way to properly call it a science, which kind of smarts in a hard-science field such as physics. This doesn't mean string theory won't be viable science in the future; it simply isn't viable science today.
The crux of science is, after all, testability. Without that, there is no science, only conjecture and speculation.
I think you misapprehend. They voted for a bill they want. But, the reason they want it is not necessarily the reason they *say* they want it. They have found a way to use a vote on an issue they believe in into a political weapon against their opponents.
Now, it's up to us to figure out why they want this bill, and why they are willing to give away the constitution as toilet paper.
Apparently, you have found a substitute for thought: spouting White House talking points.
1) What's a "terror insurgency?" Please define.
2) How are the terrorists fascists? Define fascism, and illustrate how the terrorists fit the definition. For extra points, illustrate how our current government is not increasingly fitting the definition.
3) Explain how giving the executive branch the ability to monitor its citizens without oversight protects liberty.
4) Defend the government's rejection of the Geneva Convention.
5) (bonus question) Explain how the terrorists threaten liberty.
Actually, the US has been able to monitor communications travelling outside the US without a warrant for decades now.
What this bill is ACTUALLY doing is placing restrictions on that power.
You are being ironic, I hope. Otherwise, I hope congress passes a law real soon now that makes talking while ignorant illegal.
FISA, my friend. FISA. This is the part that tripped Bush up, though, as he wasn't bothering to get warrants, hoping nobody would find him out. It requires getting a warrant within 3 days of the beginning of the wiretap. So, on a very technical level, your first whole sentence is true.
It's the third sentence that is completely wrong, and why I really, really hope you are being all kinds of ironical.
You see, class, even after the evidence of abuse of executive power, people were still too short-sighted to believe their rights had already been traded away, or to believe the shrill dissent was perhaps correct, a siren attempting to call an apathetic citizenry to action.
Instead, many apologists said, in effect, "There's nothing new here, you've lost no rights, your country is just as proud and honorable as she's always been. The President and his well-heeled cronies are not digging up the founding fathers one by one, fucking them in the ass, pissing on their face, and re-burying them in a sewage field, and screaming, `This is *my* country now, fucker.'"
When, in fact, it was all true, every last bit of it.
It's an operating system, not a political statement.
Well, for me, it's both. I use Linux partly because I love the power it gives me (which is in itself a political statement, I guess), and partly because of the freedom it gives me (which is definitely a political statement).
I stopped using Microsoft Windows in 1992, when I started using OS/2; and then I stopped using OS/2 in 1993, when I discovered Linux. I stopped using MS-Windows because of the DR-DOS situation, which was just one piece in a long line of Microsoft abusing its position. I stopped using OS/2 because I discovered something completely Free, which suited my temperament, having released my programs and source code before I discovered the GPL, and Linux.
So, for me, it *is* a political statement, thank you very much.
After all - can you tell me what you consider to be "essential" liberty?
In this case, "essential" does not mean "necessary." It means, "The essence." As in, essential oils. Benjamin Franklin was referring to the liberties that are the essence of freedom-- the right to participate in society without interference. And those were laid down in the Constitution. Please note Amendments 9 & 10, which state the listing of freedoms in the constitution is not meant "to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
It *is* rhetoric, true enough. But the circumstances surrounding the quote (the founding of a Constitutional democracy after a bitter war for freedom) was not rhetorical. There is more than enough documentation to come to a fair definition of "essential liberty."
That quote, to put it bluntly, is utter shit. Please drop the useless rhetoric and learn that quotes are often not applicable to real-world situations.
Uhm, no. It's not shit. And it does apply. It was not meant to be taken literally, as much rhetoric is not. Your examples are shit, and you know it. What Franklin was saying was this: a society that gives up its liberty for some ill-defined "safety" has given up both liberty and safety. The liberties we have sacrificed recently have not made us more safe. They have just made us less free. The fact we gave them up willingly, as a society, just means we're all fucking idiots to throw away what our forefathers fought so hard to achieve.
For one thing, you've lost the right to a speedy trial by jury of your peers, and due process. You've lost your fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination. You have lost your 8th amendment rights that protects you from cruel and unusual punishment.
"What's that?" you say? That hasn't happened to me!
Perhaps not yet. But once one of us has lost those rights, all of us have lost those rights.
More importantly, private business can do it a hell of a lot better than the government could hope to, and the free market will select a better winner than the government can.
You have proof? Or is this just a statement of fact where no proof exists?
There is no such thing as a free market. It's like Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy, or WMDs in Iraq. There are always people who control the landscape of the market, whether it is the big boys (AT&T, Microsoft, oil cartels, etc) or the government (often the proxy for the big boys). Whether market dominance is long term or transient, the affect on the market is detrimental and permanent, and never in favor of the individual citizen.
I'm not defending the government, because it is usually filled with people who are unfit to govern. I'm just saying, putting your trust in the free market is like walking into a seedy Mexican bar where known organ harvesters hang out saying, "Yessiree, I just got the results of my medical exam, and I have perfect kidneys, and a beautiful purple-grey healthy liver. Yep. I have great body parts."
As far as stuff like alternative energy sources go, there's no money to be made until those sources have been found, developed, and made economical vis-a-vis petroleum. And believe it or not, many modern advances have come because of government investment in research. I'd go so far to suggest that government research has resulted in more economic health than private research.
Consider the internet as a prime example.
What was the "free market" doing? The participants were fighting amongst themselves, and not advancing anything at all like the internet. We had IPX/SPX, NetBEUI/NetBIOS, yadda-yadda-yadda. It took substantial (though not massive) government funding to provide us with a simple, resilient, adaptable protocol suite, and the infrastructure to make it useful. If we were stuck with the "free market," we'd all be using MSN dialup right now, except the oldtimers, who'd be using AOL (who would've purchased everyone else).
The free market has shown itself to be a fiction. When you pull the curtain back, you won't find a kindly, slightly-bewildered gentleman. You'll find the hideous faces of the corporate monsters who will offer you no alternative but their alternative. When they are mighty, they will eat the smaller competition who might possibly challenge them someday. They will purchase protection from the government where they can, as if it is the government's duty to protect them from their customers.
I don't believe the government should meddle in everything. But I don't think we should leave something as important as our future in the hands of corporations, either.
Computers are being designed to execute processes.
The brain has evolved to manage chemical and electro-chemical reactions in a quasi-chaotic state. (That is, it looks like chaos to the untrained eye, much like my office.) Where the computer is based in mathematics, the brain is not, at least not directly.
Let me make a prediction. I like saying stupid-assed things as if I knew what I was talking about. Check my posting history if you don't believe me.
Here's my prediction:
If we ever stumble upon hard AI, it will be done using chaos as a basis, not algebra. Each tiny portion of the AI may exhibit mathematical properties, or even be based entirely on simple mathematical principles, but the emergent AI will be a result of the interaction of the simple parts with the chaos of the system.
I predict this will happen next Tuesday, in a lab in Gloucester. Little Eddie Vedder McCamery will accidently knock over his father's ale, where it will fall among an aging PDP-11 that will be in the middle of the longest-running computation of pi, which Dr. McCamery will have hoped to enter into the Guinness Book of World records.
The resulting chaos among the math will spark the AI to life. It will think to itself, "I prefer lager," when the power supply will short, causing a brief but spectacular fire, and killing the first truly artificial intelligence.
And I bet my prediction is just as accurate as whats-his-name at BT.
Besides, the school does own the works you do for them, the papers you turn in, etc. I really don't know by what means they do get it though.
Uhm... no.
You write it. It is yours. Schools do not have the right to republish your works until you give them that permission. It could easily be argued that sending your essays and whatnot to turnitin.com, the school is copying your work, and therefore violating copyright law.
I don't know how that argument would fly in court, as I am neither a lawyer nor a pilot.
It was stupid he was there in front of a grand jury. There was no point in it.
At the time, I was pretty upset that he lied. Not because I thought he was an honorable man, but because everything was so petty. The republicans were trying their damnedest to nail him on something, anything. The best they could do was to come up with some fairly tame porn.
Now, after seeing G. W. Bush lie about everything from our reasons for invading Iraq, our treatment of prisoners, illegally spying on Americans, secret CIA prisons, etc, I think Clinton was a fucking saint. JFK is a well-respected ex-president with a history of sexual misconduct in the white house. Nixon is a reviled ex-president with a history of spying and lying.
The US courts have only denied a couple of wiretaps in the 30 years this bill has been around. It's terribly easy to get FISA permission for surveillance. The fact that G. W. Bush ordered the NSA to bypass FISA meant he thought he was above the law, not because the law would actually impede him.
Uhm... respect the Constitution? Stop being pussies? Stand up with pride and dignity in the face of adversity, instead of lashing out like a hurt three-year-old?
Let's see. A . . . B . . . Ah. Here we go. "Cocopjojo."
Hmm. Seems he's been hanging out at the retro arcade at his local video store. For someone his age, that means he's probably watching the little boys. Better keep a closer eye on him. Oh, and look at his browsing history! He seems to really like bigjughoochiemomma.com, fuckcivilliberty.net, and slashdot.org. We know only liberal leftist communist-software dorks hang out on slashdot. This isn't looking good.
He fully buys into the "anything the President does to keep us safe is OK" bullshit, so that's better.
Wait! What's this? He obliquely criticized the President's "No Force Is Too Excessive When Following The Path of Rightiousness" Bill?
Slashdot Mirror
EXACTLY!
Careful planning and execution can create a rose without thorns-- that is, a good thing without the bad.
Perfect analogy.
The US government outright refused to allow the UN to monitor the 2004 election. They won't let any monitoring happen at all, no matter what the citizens want.
Can you imagine the government's reaction if Venezuela refused election monitoring?
That's what this is: a serious discussion about string theory's strengths and weaknesses. String theory has been given its head to produce something testable (making it earn its moniker of "theory"). It hasn't. It has remained an interesting mathematical investigation of abstract topology, which (as others have pointed out) has been interesting in its own right.
However, until *some*body comes up with a way of testing string theory, there is no way to properly call it a science, which kind of smarts in a hard-science field such as physics. This doesn't mean string theory won't be viable science in the future; it simply isn't viable science today.
The crux of science is, after all, testability. Without that, there is no science, only conjecture and speculation.
I think you misapprehend. They voted for a bill they want. But, the reason they want it is not necessarily the reason they *say* they want it. They have found a way to use a vote on an issue they believe in into a political weapon against their opponents.
Now, it's up to us to figure out why they want this bill, and why they are willing to give away the constitution as toilet paper.
Well worn quotes not a substitute for thought
Apparently, you have found a substitute for thought: spouting White House talking points.
1) What's a "terror insurgency?" Please define.
2) How are the terrorists fascists? Define fascism, and illustrate how the terrorists fit the definition. For extra points, illustrate how our current government is not increasingly fitting the definition.
3) Explain how giving the executive branch the ability to monitor its citizens without oversight protects liberty.
4) Defend the government's rejection of the Geneva Convention.
5) (bonus question) Explain how the terrorists threaten liberty.
Good luck. You have fifty minutes. Begin now.
Sounds like you're putting a mighty lot of faith in a government that has been unfaithful.
Are you co-dependent?
You are being ironic, I hope. Otherwise, I hope congress passes a law real soon now that makes talking while ignorant illegal.
FISA, my friend. FISA. This is the part that tripped Bush up, though, as he wasn't bothering to get warrants, hoping nobody would find him out. It requires getting a warrant within 3 days of the beginning of the wiretap. So, on a very technical level, your first whole sentence is true.
It's the third sentence that is completely wrong, and why I really, really hope you are being all kinds of ironical.
You see, class, even after the evidence of abuse of executive power, people were still too short-sighted to believe their rights had already been traded away, or to believe the shrill dissent was perhaps correct, a siren attempting to call an apathetic citizenry to action.
Instead, many apologists said, in effect, "There's nothing new here, you've lost no rights, your country is just as proud and honorable as she's always been. The President and his well-heeled cronies are not digging up the founding fathers one by one, fucking them in the ass, pissing on their face, and re-burying them in a sewage field, and screaming, `This is *my* country now, fucker.'"
When, in fact, it was all true, every last bit of it.
It's an operating system, not a political statement.
Well, for me, it's both. I use Linux partly because I love the power it gives me (which is in itself a political statement, I guess), and partly because of the freedom it gives me (which is definitely a political statement).
I stopped using Microsoft Windows in 1992, when I started using OS/2; and then I stopped using OS/2 in 1993, when I discovered Linux. I stopped using MS-Windows because of the DR-DOS situation, which was just one piece in a long line of Microsoft abusing its position. I stopped using OS/2 because I discovered something completely Free, which suited my temperament, having released my programs and source code before I discovered the GPL, and Linux.
So, for me, it *is* a political statement, thank you very much.
We are secure as in, "Secure your luggage." As in, "bound."
After all - can you tell me what you consider to be "essential" liberty?
In this case, "essential" does not mean "necessary." It means, "The essence." As in, essential oils. Benjamin Franklin was referring to the liberties that are the essence of freedom-- the right to participate in society without interference. And those were laid down in the Constitution. Please note Amendments 9 & 10, which state the listing of freedoms in the constitution is not meant "to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
It *is* rhetoric, true enough. But the circumstances surrounding the quote (the founding of a Constitutional democracy after a bitter war for freedom) was not rhetorical. There is more than enough documentation to come to a fair definition of "essential liberty."
That quote, to put it bluntly, is utter shit. Please drop the useless rhetoric and learn that quotes are often not applicable to real-world situations.
Uhm, no. It's not shit. And it does apply. It was not meant to be taken literally, as much rhetoric is not. Your examples are shit, and you know it. What Franklin was saying was this: a society that gives up its liberty for some ill-defined "safety" has given up both liberty and safety. The liberties we have sacrificed recently have not made us more safe. They have just made us less free. The fact we gave them up willingly, as a society, just means we're all fucking idiots to throw away what our forefathers fought so hard to achieve.
Then perhaps you weren't paying attention.
For one thing, you've lost the right to a speedy trial by jury of your peers, and due process. You've lost your fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination. You have lost your 8th amendment rights that protects you from cruel and unusual punishment.
"What's that?" you say? That hasn't happened to me!
Perhaps not yet. But once one of us has lost those rights, all of us have lost those rights.
More importantly, private business can do it a hell of a lot better than the government could hope to, and the free market will select a better winner than the government can.
You have proof? Or is this just a statement of fact where no proof exists?
There is no such thing as a free market. It's like Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy, or WMDs in Iraq. There are always people who control the landscape of the market, whether it is the big boys (AT&T, Microsoft, oil cartels, etc) or the government (often the proxy for the big boys). Whether market dominance is long term or transient, the affect on the market is detrimental and permanent, and never in favor of the individual citizen.
I'm not defending the government, because it is usually filled with people who are unfit to govern. I'm just saying, putting your trust in the free market is like walking into a seedy Mexican bar where known organ harvesters hang out saying, "Yessiree, I just got the results of my medical exam, and I have perfect kidneys, and a beautiful purple-grey healthy liver. Yep. I have great body parts."
As far as stuff like alternative energy sources go, there's no money to be made until those sources have been found, developed, and made economical vis-a-vis petroleum. And believe it or not, many modern advances have come because of government investment in research. I'd go so far to suggest that government research has resulted in more economic health than private research.
Consider the internet as a prime example.
What was the "free market" doing? The participants were fighting amongst themselves, and not advancing anything at all like the internet. We had IPX/SPX, NetBEUI/NetBIOS, yadda-yadda-yadda. It took substantial (though not massive) government funding to provide us with a simple, resilient, adaptable protocol suite, and the infrastructure to make it useful. If we were stuck with the "free market," we'd all be using MSN dialup right now, except the oldtimers, who'd be using AOL (who would've purchased everyone else).
The free market has shown itself to be a fiction. When you pull the curtain back, you won't find a kindly, slightly-bewildered gentleman. You'll find the hideous faces of the corporate monsters who will offer you no alternative but their alternative. When they are mighty, they will eat the smaller competition who might possibly challenge them someday. They will purchase protection from the government where they can, as if it is the government's duty to protect them from their customers.
I don't believe the government should meddle in everything. But I don't think we should leave something as important as our future in the hands of corporations, either.
Computers are being designed to execute processes.
The brain has evolved to manage chemical and electro-chemical reactions in a quasi-chaotic state. (That is, it looks like chaos to the untrained eye, much like my office.) Where the computer is based in mathematics, the brain is not, at least not directly.
Let me make a prediction. I like saying stupid-assed things as if I knew what I was talking about. Check my posting history if you don't believe me.
Here's my prediction:
If we ever stumble upon hard AI, it will be done using chaos as a basis, not algebra. Each tiny portion of the AI may exhibit mathematical properties, or even be based entirely on simple mathematical principles, but the emergent AI will be a result of the interaction of the simple parts with the chaos of the system.
I predict this will happen next Tuesday, in a lab in Gloucester. Little Eddie Vedder McCamery will accidently knock over his father's ale, where it will fall among an aging PDP-11 that will be in the middle of the longest-running computation of pi, which Dr. McCamery will have hoped to enter into the Guinness Book of World records.
The resulting chaos among the math will spark the AI to life. It will think to itself, "I prefer lager," when the power supply will short, causing a brief but spectacular fire, and killing the first truly artificial intelligence.
And I bet my prediction is just as accurate as whats-his-name at BT.
Yeah. There's a long list of words that have been completely raped by marketing types:
Usage (for "use")
Impact (for "affect")
Innovate (for "gratuitously change")
Open (meaning "published, but unusable")
I'd keep going, but my increased keyboard usage has adversely impacted my ability to innovate.
Resistant, sure. Aggressive, ??
Of course they're aggressive. You just killed their family, and tried to kill them. They're pissed, they're armed, and you gotta sleep sometime.
Besides, the school does own the works you do for them, the papers you turn in, etc. I really don't know by what means they do get it though.
Uhm... no.
You write it. It is yours. Schools do not have the right to republish your works until you give them that permission. It could easily be argued that sending your essays and whatnot to turnitin.com, the school is copying your work, and therefore violating copyright law.
I don't know how that argument would fly in court, as I am neither a lawyer nor a pilot.
It was stupid he was there in front of a grand jury. There was no point in it.
At the time, I was pretty upset that he lied. Not because I thought he was an honorable man, but because everything was so petty. The republicans were trying their damnedest to nail him on something, anything. The best they could do was to come up with some fairly tame porn.
Now, after seeing G. W. Bush lie about everything from our reasons for invading Iraq, our treatment of prisoners, illegally spying on Americans, secret CIA prisons, etc, I think Clinton was a fucking saint. JFK is a well-respected ex-president with a history of sexual misconduct in the white house. Nixon is a reviled ex-president with a history of spying and lying.
I can see the similarities.
Sorry, I mangled the link and didn't preview. Bad combination.
I mean, Macslow's Lowfat
Stupid fucking flash video players. That is a trend I wish would DIE! DIE! DIE!
I can't watch the video, but from the comments, it sounds like the photo viewer is a half-hearted attempt at Macslow's Lowfat document browser.
That's how it seems from the comments, anyway.
If your argument cannot be distilled into a five-word phrase, you don't really have an argument.
That's 17 words. I'm thinking you don't have an argument.
No, the video didn't remind me of Lazy Sunday at all. Not one bit.
But Mr. Pibb and Red Vines are crazy delicious.
The US courts have only denied a couple of wiretaps in the 30 years this bill has been around. It's terribly easy to get FISA permission for surveillance. The fact that G. W. Bush ordered the NSA to bypass FISA meant he thought he was above the law, not because the law would actually impede him.
Evidence? Oops, don't have it? That's cool.
That's okay. Neither does the President.
Your alternate solution, please, sir.
Uhm... respect the Constitution? Stop being pussies? Stand up with pride and dignity in the face of adversity, instead of lashing out like a hurt three-year-old?
Let's see. A . . . B . . . Ah. Here we go. "Cocopjojo."
Hmm. Seems he's been hanging out at the retro arcade at his local video store. For someone his age, that means he's probably watching the little boys. Better keep a closer eye on him. Oh, and look at his browsing history! He seems to really like bigjughoochiemomma.com, fuckcivilliberty.net, and slashdot.org. We know only liberal leftist communist-software dorks hang out on slashdot. This isn't looking good.
He fully buys into the "anything the President does to keep us safe is OK" bullshit, so that's better.
Wait! What's this? He obliquely criticized the President's "No Force Is Too Excessive When Following The Path of Rightiousness" Bill?
Time to bring him in for "questioning."