Look, I'm not going to sit here and argue religion with all of you. You believe what you want and leave me alone to do the same. However, if you are going to claim that the whole of the world's major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and so on, are on par with a religion formed in the past 50 years based on a book written by the same guy that wrote Battlefield Earth... Well, let's just say you're fucked in the head. At least no one is still alive to say that Moses never parted the red sea so it's based on faith, but there are plenty around who can testify that LRon never parted anything other than his hair.
that you only have to get a drivers license if you want to drive. True, but good luck opening a bank account, cashing or writing a check or opening a bank account without a state issued ID. (And yes, in most, if not all states, you can get an ID that is not a driver's license.)
I can see that the Fed. one will likely start requiring everyone to have and ID (papers please?). Like a Social Security card?
You also don't have to show your drivers license really for anything but if you get pulled over for a driving infraction. Again, ever try to cash a check without ID?
This here allows for you to be tracked in a fashion like never before. How? Unless you have to swipe your ID before you enter the mall or grocery store, I don't see how the gov't can track you without some type of chip that transmits your grid coordinates embedded. When the Federal mandate requires those, I'll oppose it with you!
What if you had to show this ID for all transactions...even cash ones? What if? What if they made you wear a helmet cam 24/7? What if the gov't uses these ID's to lock us all into communes where we grow our own food and run around naked? "What if's" don't mean anything to me. We're just talking about a nationwide standard for the ID's we already carry. Nothing more. Also... that's why I do not belong to any grocery store "discount club plans" where you carry a card that allows you to get a special price for most of the stuff in the store. If a deal comes along that is too good to pass up, you will find me sign up under than name of "Bugs Bunny". So I understand your concern, but the gov't could do the same now with social security cards. Show me something new.
Not the most cohesive answer to your post...a little rambly...but, I hope you can get some ideas of possible issues. No, that was a good answer. I have a better understanding, but still don't see the difference between a federal ID standard and state ID's or social security cards. At least not a big enough difference to justify such a strong reaction. It's not like these things will have open mic's, cameras and GPS's installed in them.
No, you couldn't. The Bible, all religion aside, is at least a historic text. Many of the stories and accounts in the Bible can be and have been verified. Regardless of your religious preferences, you don't contest the fact that pharos existed, crosses were used for execution or that Caesar was in charge of Rome. Contrasted to scientology, there are no pyramids built buy Xenu!
It invades our right to privacy by requiring this card for any action we might take, thus allowing the government to track every thing we do. These will be required to purchase and use air plane tickets (and IIRC, bus and train tickets), when you use any government office, etc. And while this isn't part of the legislation (its only a matter of time), doubtless for most financial transactions such as new bank and credit card accounts, utilities, etc. Currently, no single government agency has the legal right to get this information without dozens of search warrants; once all of this is grouped together, one agency will have full, unmitigated access to do all the data mining they might want.
How is this different from existing state ID's?
Am I the only one that finds the irony in states that issue ID's are resisting Federal ID's because they say ID's are an invasion of privacy?
Scientology is based on science and so clearly is not legitimate.
No, scientology is based on a science fiction novel. It's no more a religion than The Jedi Order or a church based on Harry Potter.
Personally, I don't care what scientologists do, but if I can be ridiculed for believing in ID, then I see no reason why this guy should go to jail if all he did was ridicule Tom Cruise.
Excellent post, except it's not the gov't that's spying on you, but a corporation, namely Tivo. But since bashing the gov't is cooler than smoking these days, I understand your reasoning.
Unfortunately, the only experience I've had with the Mac was the beige, so that's the story I told. You explained that the beige was unique case (or the last of its kind). It's good to hear that the upgrade path is much easier (possible) now.
The minimum requirements for Vista list the processor at 800MHZ. The PIII 800 was released in Q1 2000, meaning that Vista, minus the bells and whistles will run on a PC released seven years ago (although, I don't know why you'd want to!) Unlike my 300MHz Beige Mac that was sold from 1997 to 1999, would not run the latest OSX 10.2 released in 2002. (Old example, I know, but that's the only Mac I ever owned)
The original point was that Macs could not be upgraded. While this is not true, eventually you will have to purchase a whole new Mac in order to run the latest OS release. I was pointing out that you can upgrade a PC almost indefinitely to run the latest OS (Windows specifically, even more so with Linux) without ever having to purchase a whole new system. Granted, it won't be too long before every component in the case is replaced, but if I could have done that with my Beige G3, I would still be using that Mac today!
You may have found different information, but the first search I came across listed the PowerEdge 2400 at a price of $8,994 in June of 2001. This G4 was $3199 in July of 2000 from what I could find. I stand corrected. I was actually thinking of 2002 prices.
Sorry I kinda flew off the handle. Accepted also. Fortunately, you are on the "right" side of this discussion so you won't be modded down.
My only point in bringing up the ozone is that it was supposed to kill us all, or at least make us walk around in burkas. Now, it's no longer spoken of. However, if a scientist had said in 1997 that the ozone would be forgotten by 2007, he would have been ridiculed, shouted down and possibly decertified. Now, global warming skeptics face the same fate. Granted, all evidence supports global warming, but in the 1990's all evidence pointed to a growing ozone whole.
Personally, I accept global warming. I won't say that I know it is happening (I have made the world-wide observations personally), but I accept the evidence. That said, I have a hard time accepting the cause of global warming. While I won't reject man's role in it, have found that man is generally arrogant and believes himself to be the cause of anything not fully explained. There are just too many other factors that could just as likely be the cause that have nothing to do with CO2 levels, such as an increase in solar activity and warming on other planets on our solar system as well.
Finally, it seems that many environmentalists raise the alarm flag way too often to achieve ulterior motives. The largest proponents of global warming are the same groups that opposed development well before global warming was on the radar. The Sierra Club is one such example. In the headlines today: President Jacques Chirac has demanded that the United States sign both the Kyoto climate protocol and a future agreement that will take effect when the Kyoto accord runs out in 2012... But he warned that if the United States did not sign the agreements, a carbon tax across Europe on imports from nations that have not signed the Kyoto treaty could be imposed to try to force compliance. The European Union is the largest export market for American goods. This is an example of the political abuse of global warming that turns me off of the whole idea.
Do you even know what the ozone hole is, and where it is located? Here's a clue: it ain't over Texas. Hot and sunny has nothing to do with it. By the by, although Texas is nowhere near the hole, it has still seen a huge jump in the number of cases of skin cancer due to the general level of ozone depletion. I haven't heard that, but I'll take your word for it. Ah Hell, I looked it up. Skin cancer rates in Texas were up 2.6% annually. However, I noticed that the article did not mention the ozone at all. So I looked up information about the WHO report on skin cancer and came up with this one which claims the rise is due to artificial tanning. I looked at the top nine articles found by Googling "why are skin cancer rates rising" (no quotes). The word ozone showed up in none of them. I'm not saying ozone depletion is not the cause, but it sure did drop off the headlines quickly. You would think that if it were still a large problem, at least one of the nine articles would have mentioned it.
Your callous, arrogant, know it all attitude may irk me, but I still hope no one you know and love gets skin cancer. It's a horrible disease, and one of the more lethal forms of cancer.
Sorry, man. I don't mean to irk or offend. Frankly, I'm enjoying the discussion. I don't try to be a know-it-all. I just question the group-think of the day. I just think that some things should be questioned, and those that question them should not be shouted down, ridiculed and have their morals questioned. The things that should be questioned most are those things that make the headlines because they are scary. Examples include: The population bomb, Global cooling/ice age, ozone depletion, dwindling energy supplies, global starvation (see population bomb), bird flu, SIDS, mad cow, e-bola, small pox, anthrax, the beltway sniper, and today, it's global warming. While these are full of the F in FUD, I like to represent the U and the D.
I originally miscounted my processor, and MB upgrades... it's been through three processors and motherboards. (Note, that I could have also kept the original video card, but chose to upgrade that along with everything else)
So your complaint is that you bought a used machine that you couldn't upgrade to the latest PCI spec that would enable support for a graphics feature in an OS released 5 years after the computer? I mean, barring a total mobo replacement, what were you expecting?
Nothing. I was happy with my purchase. I posted the comment because someone mentioned that Macs were completely upgradeable in response to a post stating that you may have to throw away your Mac to run the latest OSX.
And to the best of my knowledge, there was no mobo replacement available for the beige case, meaning that the best I could do was to buy a new (or at least newer) Mac. To contrast my Mac with my PC: I am running XP on a system that has had the motherboard upgraded twice, the processor upgraded once, the video card upgraded at least four times and I won't even guess as to how many hard drives have been in the system. Not forced upgrades, but just little piecemeal, one part at a time upgrades to keep my system current. What started out as an AMD Athlon XP 2000 with a nVidia 4200 became an Athlon64 3000 with a nVidia 6600GT and is now an Opteron 175 dual core with an nVidia 7800GS. The case, RAM, DVDROM, power supply, TV card and sound card are all original.
It ran OSX, just not the latest of the day. Frankly, as poorly as this system ran OSX, there was no way I was going to try to force anything else on it. This thing strained to display graphics in Safari. YellowDog Linux provided a better solution for me anyway, although I found it odd that I had to boot halfway into OS9 before I could select YD Linux.
Let's see, for the price you paid for your Mac, you could have purchased a Dell PowerEdge 2400 Dual P-III running at 800MHz to 1GHz with 4 GB of RAM. Yeah, that would run Vista. You won't see the fancy 3D interface, but it will run the OS.
I think he is talking about a situation similar to what I went through: I purchased an old 300 Mhz G3 (Beige and White) off of ebay many moons ago. It was capable of running OSX. However, when OSX.2 (or some other upgraded came out... Panther, Puma, Pershing, Lyger... I don't recall) that allowed for the 3D accelerated desktop, my system would not run it. The blue and whites could, but not the beige. There was absolutely nothing I could do to make the system run it. Oh sure, the system could be upgraded with a new processor, memory, hard drive or whatever, but no upgrade would allow for this functionality. My options were to either do without or buy a new Mac.
(BTW, I chose option 3 and installed Linux on it.)
Again, this was a long time ago. Maybe things have changed since then.
You don't live in australia do you? Nope. I'm afraid I am ignorant to life in hot, sunny climates. I live in Texas.
The good news is, BECAUSE OF ALL THE MEDIA HYPE, we (the industralized nations of the world) stopped using CFCs to a large number and now the ozone layer is HEALING ITSELF. Of course! And in 20 years when the earth is not a fireball, you'll say the same thing.
Is there any evidence that a scientist has changed their opinion based on the money received for Exxon/Mobil? Or is it more likely that Exxon/Mobil found scientists who had already come up with the conclusions that Exxon/Mobil wanted? There is a HUGE difference.
One side is paying for lies, the other side is paying for science. I seem to recall scientists sounding the alarm over Ozone depletion winning the Nobel Prize. Yet, I don't have skin cancer. With all the alarm that raised over the "ozone hole", can you tell me without a shred of doubt that global warming is not experiencing the same media driven hype cycle?
If it were just gov't research, you'd have a point, but:
In addition, if a climate skeptic receives any money from industry, the media immediately labels them and attempts to discredit their work. The same media completely ignore the money flow from the environmental lobby to climate alarmists like James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer. (ie. Hansen received $250,000 from the Heinz Foundation and Oppenheimer is a paid partisan of Environmental Defense Fund)
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Look, I'm not going to sit here and argue religion with all of you. You believe what you want and leave me alone to do the same. However, if you are going to claim that the whole of the world's major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and so on, are on par with a religion formed in the past 50 years based on a book written by the same guy that wrote Battlefield Earth... Well, let's just say you're fucked in the head. At least no one is still alive to say that Moses never parted the red sea so it's based on faith, but there are plenty around who can testify that LRon never parted anything other than his hair.
that you only have to get a drivers license if you want to drive.
True, but good luck opening a bank account, cashing or writing a check or opening a bank account without a state issued ID. (And yes, in most, if not all states, you can get an ID that is not a driver's license.)
I can see that the Fed. one will likely start requiring everyone to have and ID (papers please?).
Like a Social Security card?
You also don't have to show your drivers license really for anything but if you get pulled over for a driving infraction.
Again, ever try to cash a check without ID?
This here allows for you to be tracked in a fashion like never before.
How? Unless you have to swipe your ID before you enter the mall or grocery store, I don't see how the gov't can track you without some type of chip that transmits your grid coordinates embedded. When the Federal mandate requires those, I'll oppose it with you!
What if you had to show this ID for all transactions...even cash ones?
What if? What if they made you wear a helmet cam 24/7? What if the gov't uses these ID's to lock us all into communes where we grow our own food and run around naked? "What if's" don't mean anything to me. We're just talking about a nationwide standard for the ID's we already carry. Nothing more.
Also... that's why I do not belong to any grocery store "discount club plans" where you carry a card that allows you to get a special price for most of the stuff in the store. If a deal comes along that is too good to pass up, you will find me sign up under than name of "Bugs Bunny". So I understand your concern, but the gov't could do the same now with social security cards. Show me something new.
Not the most cohesive answer to your post...a little rambly...but, I hope you can get some ideas of possible issues.
No, that was a good answer. I have a better understanding, but still don't see the difference between a federal ID standard and state ID's or social security cards. At least not a big enough difference to justify such a strong reaction. It's not like these things will have open mic's, cameras and GPS's installed in them.
You could say the same about the bible...
No, you couldn't. The Bible, all religion aside, is at least a historic text. Many of the stories and accounts in the Bible can be and have been verified. Regardless of your religious preferences, you don't contest the fact that pharos existed, crosses were used for execution or that Caesar was in charge of Rome. Contrasted to scientology, there are no pyramids built buy Xenu!
It invades our right to privacy by requiring this card for any action we might take, thus allowing the government to track every thing we do. These will be required to purchase and use air plane tickets (and IIRC, bus and train tickets), when you use any government office, etc. And while this isn't part of the legislation (its only a matter of time), doubtless for most financial transactions such as new bank and credit card accounts, utilities, etc. Currently, no single government agency has the legal right to get this information without dozens of search warrants; once all of this is grouped together, one agency will have full, unmitigated access to do all the data mining they might want.
How is this different from existing state ID's?
Am I the only one that finds the irony in states that issue ID's are resisting Federal ID's because they say ID's are an invasion of privacy?
Scientology is based on science and so clearly is not legitimate.
No, scientology is based on a science fiction novel. It's no more a religion than The Jedi Order or a church based on Harry Potter.
Personally, I don't care what scientologists do, but if I can be ridiculed for believing in ID, then I see no reason why this guy should go to jail if all he did was ridicule Tom Cruise.
Perhaps an Amendment guaranteeing our heretofore unenumerated Right to Privacy??
How does this invade your privacy? Is there a camera on these things?
the GP can get stuck watching what I like.
Awesome point!!! My wife gets pissed because every show we can both agree on gets canceled.
Maybe if more Firefly fans had Tivo, the show would still be on the air!
What do you think would happen if you used Tivo and your viewing habits were included in the data?
His tin-foil hat would rust!
Excellent post, except it's not the gov't that's spying on you, but a corporation, namely Tivo. But since bashing the gov't is cooler than smoking these days, I understand your reasoning.
Thanx for the info. I didn't know.
Unfortunately, the only experience I've had with the Mac was the beige, so that's the story I told. You explained that the beige was unique case (or the last of its kind). It's good to hear that the upgrade path is much easier (possible) now.
They better bring that "Walking on Sunshine" dog back. The ending of that episode broke my heart!
You need to take that up with the manatees.
The minimum requirements for Vista list the processor at 800MHZ. The PIII 800 was released in Q1 2000, meaning that Vista, minus the bells and whistles will run on a PC released seven years ago (although, I don't know why you'd want to!) Unlike my 300MHz Beige Mac that was sold from 1997 to 1999, would not run the latest OSX 10.2 released in 2002. (Old example, I know, but that's the only Mac I ever owned)
The original point was that Macs could not be upgraded. While this is not true, eventually you will have to purchase a whole new Mac in order to run the latest OS release. I was pointing out that you can upgrade a PC almost indefinitely to run the latest OS (Windows specifically, even more so with Linux) without ever having to purchase a whole new system. Granted, it won't be too long before every component in the case is replaced, but if I could have done that with my Beige G3, I would still be using that Mac today!
You may have found different information, but the first search I came across listed the PowerEdge 2400 at a price of $8,994 in June of 2001. This G4 was $3199 in July of 2000 from what I could find.
I stand corrected. I was actually thinking of 2002 prices.
Sorry I kinda flew off the handle.
Accepted also. Fortunately, you are on the "right" side of this discussion so you won't be modded down.
My only point in bringing up the ozone is that it was supposed to kill us all, or at least make us walk around in burkas. Now, it's no longer spoken of. However, if a scientist had said in 1997 that the ozone would be forgotten by 2007, he would have been ridiculed, shouted down and possibly decertified. Now, global warming skeptics face the same fate. Granted, all evidence supports global warming, but in the 1990's all evidence pointed to a growing ozone whole.
Personally, I accept global warming. I won't say that I know it is happening (I have made the world-wide observations personally), but I accept the evidence. That said, I have a hard time accepting the cause of global warming. While I won't reject man's role in it, have found that man is generally arrogant and believes himself to be the cause of anything not fully explained. There are just too many other factors that could just as likely be the cause that have nothing to do with CO2 levels, such as an increase in solar activity and warming on other planets on our solar system as well.
Finally, it seems that many environmentalists raise the alarm flag way too often to achieve ulterior motives. The largest proponents of global warming are the same groups that opposed development well before global warming was on the radar. The Sierra Club is one such example. In the headlines today:
President Jacques Chirac has demanded that the United States sign both the Kyoto climate protocol and a future agreement that will take effect when the Kyoto accord runs out in 2012...
But he warned that if the United States did not sign the agreements, a carbon tax across Europe on imports from nations that have not signed the Kyoto treaty could be imposed to try to force compliance. The European Union is the largest export market for American goods.
This is an example of the political abuse of global warming that turns me off of the whole idea.
Do you even know what the ozone hole is, and where it is located? Here's a clue: it ain't over Texas. Hot and sunny has nothing to do with it. By the by, although Texas is nowhere near the hole, it has still seen a huge jump in the number of cases of skin cancer due to the general level of ozone depletion.
I haven't heard that, but I'll take your word for it. Ah Hell, I looked it up. Skin cancer rates in Texas were up 2.6% annually. However, I noticed that the article did not mention the ozone at all. So I looked up information about the WHO report on skin cancer and came up with this one which claims the rise is due to artificial tanning. I looked at the top nine articles found by Googling "why are skin cancer rates rising" (no quotes). The word ozone showed up in none of them. I'm not saying ozone depletion is not the cause, but it sure did drop off the headlines quickly. You would think that if it were still a large problem, at least one of the nine articles would have mentioned it.
Your callous, arrogant, know it all attitude may irk me, but I still hope no one you know and love gets skin cancer. It's a horrible disease, and one of the more lethal forms of cancer.
Sorry, man. I don't mean to irk or offend. Frankly, I'm enjoying the discussion. I don't try to be a know-it-all. I just question the group-think of the day. I just think that some things should be questioned, and those that question them should not be shouted down, ridiculed and have their morals questioned. The things that should be questioned most are those things that make the headlines because they are scary. Examples include: The population bomb, Global cooling/ice age, ozone depletion, dwindling energy supplies, global starvation (see population bomb), bird flu, SIDS, mad cow, e-bola, small pox, anthrax, the beltway sniper, and today, it's global warming. While these are full of the F in FUD, I like to represent the U and the D.
Correction:
I originally miscounted my processor, and MB upgrades... it's been through three processors and motherboards. (Note, that I could have also kept the original video card, but chose to upgrade that along with everything else)
So your complaint is that you bought a used machine that you couldn't upgrade to the latest PCI spec that would enable support for a graphics feature in an OS released 5 years after the computer? I mean, barring a total mobo replacement, what were you expecting?
Nothing. I was happy with my purchase. I posted the comment because someone mentioned that Macs were completely upgradeable in response to a post stating that you may have to throw away your Mac to run the latest OSX.
And to the best of my knowledge, there was no mobo replacement available for the beige case, meaning that the best I could do was to buy a new (or at least newer) Mac.
To contrast my Mac with my PC: I am running XP on a system that has had the motherboard upgraded twice, the processor upgraded once, the video card upgraded at least four times and I won't even guess as to how many hard drives have been in the system. Not forced upgrades, but just little piecemeal, one part at a time upgrades to keep my system current. What started out as an AMD Athlon XP 2000 with a nVidia 4200 became an Athlon64 3000 with a nVidia 6600GT and is now an Opteron 175 dual core with an nVidia 7800GS. The case, RAM, DVDROM, power supply, TV card and sound card are all original.
It ran OSX, just not the latest of the day. Frankly, as poorly as this system ran OSX, there was no way I was going to try to force anything else on it. This thing strained to display graphics in Safari. YellowDog Linux provided a better solution for me anyway, although I found it odd that I had to boot halfway into OS9 before I could select YD Linux.
Let's see, for the price you paid for your Mac, you could have purchased a Dell PowerEdge 2400 Dual P-III running at 800MHz to 1GHz with 4 GB of RAM. Yeah, that would run Vista. You won't see the fancy 3D interface, but it will run the OS.
I think he is talking about a situation similar to what I went through:
I purchased an old 300 Mhz G3 (Beige and White) off of ebay many moons ago. It was capable of running OSX. However, when OSX.2 (or some other upgraded came out... Panther, Puma, Pershing, Lyger... I don't recall) that allowed for the 3D accelerated desktop, my system would not run it. The blue and whites could, but not the beige. There was absolutely nothing I could do to make the system run it. Oh sure, the system could be upgraded with a new processor, memory, hard drive or whatever, but no upgrade would allow for this functionality. My options were to either do without or buy a new Mac.
(BTW, I chose option 3 and installed Linux on it.)
Again, this was a long time ago. Maybe things have changed since then.
You don't live in australia do you?
Nope. I'm afraid I am ignorant to life in hot, sunny climates. I live in Texas.
The good news is, BECAUSE OF ALL THE MEDIA HYPE, we (the industralized nations of the world) stopped using CFCs to a large number and now the ozone layer is HEALING ITSELF.
Of course! And in 20 years when the earth is not a fireball, you'll say the same thing.
Is there any evidence that a scientist has changed their opinion based on the money received for Exxon/Mobil? Or is it more likely that Exxon/Mobil found scientists who had already come up with the conclusions that Exxon/Mobil wanted? There is a HUGE difference.
One side is paying for lies, the other side is paying for science.
I seem to recall scientists sounding the alarm over Ozone depletion winning the Nobel Prize. Yet, I don't have skin cancer. With all the alarm that raised over the "ozone hole", can you tell me without a shred of doubt that global warming is not experiencing the same media driven hype cycle?