"What you are doing now is pining for the chance to see if there's more to life than what you've already accomplished.
There is. And you already have it."
Bullshit. that is a contradiction. What kind of a superhero is so awsome that they can accomplish all there is to do in life and be simultaneously such a retard that they dont know it.
If you already have it, then kill yourself. why the hell would you want to just hold on and slowly watch the world crumble around you while you sit uselessly and smug in your knowledge that you HAVE it? explain the meaning of that? yes.. it would be great for your boss if you just kept on cranking away.. afterall.. thats what its all about right?
life is not about stagnation. Its not about HAVING. its about growing. Its about seeing, learning and teaching.. and in the end its about dying. And it doesn't matter if you die broke because in the end. YOU DIE. You may as well die right now if you've done all you are ever going to do.
Don't be a chicken shit. success is measured by challenges overcome, deeds accomplished, inventions and creations, not by dollars. I look at people 10 to 20 years older than me who have basically decided 'ohh.. my time to live is over' and it is beyond pathetic. It is the very definition of OLD. And the same time some people that age dont have that attitude.. and they dont seem old in any way. you can lose everything you have at ANY time. and in the end you WILL.
Perhaps you'll have an interesting tale to tell when you are 70 so you wont be completely useless.
if every man experiences a longing to find something MORE as they get older perhaps that is a clue. There *IS* something more.. and whoever tells you that you should just take it easy is killing you. They aren't a friend. They are a parasite holding you back.
lets say someone works their ass off then hits 65 and is staring down a whole wad of cash.. then what? go and pay people to shuttle you around like an idiot for the rest of your days? Why did you live at all if that was all you ever thought to accomplish? sit around and uselessly accumulate for your entire life, and not only are you destroying your own life.. but you are destroying the lives of everyone around you by being a horrible role model. you and all your loved ones are being diminished.. with that philosophy you may as well all be oxen, pulling the plow. nothing more.
"Not going to work. How are you going to detect which car it's being broadcast from?"
because its the direction from which the signal is being broadcast.
" You're talking about reliably pinpointing a moving target that's probably only putting out a sub-second burst, along with a lot of other cars that are also transmitting things."
on second thought.. you're right. Obviously this problem is utterly unsolvable. call the whole thing off.
" Not to mention that they're all metal objects, so the multipath would be hideous... you'd never be able to reliably locate which car was transmitting what."
yes. no one's ever solved that damn multipath problem before. especially with digital information and with timestamps... for that matter.. getting cars to transmit traffic conditions itself is obviously impossible.. how the hell are you going to get a car to know the traffic conditions.. its not human!
"" Sure, you could serialize the transmitters, but it would be trivial to spoof someone else's."
yes.. because the only way to determine which car isn't hampered by the false information would be to check everyones ID.
simply observing the car driving normally while everyone else slows down wouldn't give it away.
we should also get rid of fire alarms in buildings.. most of them are false alarms anyway.
"Except we do have, on the face of it, good reasons to believe that a legal drinking age of 21 is effective at reducing drinking among minors."
It also prevents adults under 21 from being able to drink when they have every natural right to, but who cares about that.
"There is significant brain development occurring up to even 18. "
right so public school should be mandatory up to 18 shouldn't it? And if it isn't mandatory up to 18, then where do we get off banning alcohol? its hypocritical. Futhermore, the drinking age is 21.. NOT 18.. but its the same difference I guess.. whats 3 extra years of having your rights trampled. the best way to start life as an adult is to be treated like a minor.
"If you are yourself 21 or older, I feel sorry for you that you still see your parents and past teachers as involved in some sort of conspiracy to maliciously oppress and control you."
I'm over 30. And it isn't a conspiracy. And my parents and teachers couldn't care less. They weren't part of any conspiracy. What it is, is apathy and cowardice amongst politicians. At 18 a person is legally an adult and legally they should be responsible to deciding if they want to drink. thats it.
at least over here with a drinking age of 19 there is only 1 year of flippant and unjust denial of liberties.. its almost trifling enough not to care about. But there is plenty of reason to believe that the prohibition on alcohol leads to drug use amongst kids. So what would you prefer? youths drinking as youths have done for thousands of years, or youths popping pills? alcoholism is much harder to hide than drug addiction. yes.. its a problem. but life is full of problems.. infringing the rights of 18, 19, and 20 year olds is not a rational or effective solution.
but hey.. alcohol bans work in islamic nations so why not in america?
"but don't let that stop you from going apeshit over molehills while you ignore mountains
mountains of injustice that leads to the kind of islamofascism the world is having troubles with now"
The united states is a pretty fucking giant molehill. Its one of the largest countries in the world and the single largest economy.
I dont ignore any injustice. What you are asking people to do is to ignore the giant "molehill" they have some influence over, because there is a mediocre sized "mountain" on the other side of the earth that they can't do anything about. They can't do anything about it because the Execute Branch of the United States of America has claimed sole jurisdiction over US foreign policy.
The US is capturing people without any due process whatsoever and turning them over to countries such as syria or egypt to evade the bill of rights. The US decides to go ahead and resume the nuclear arms race (the ultimate crime against the all humanity).
the US is holding prisoners without any charges or legal rights.
being jail for 5 years for blasphemy is less of a human rights violation than being jailed for 5 years with no charge whatsoever.
The laws against blasphemy in egypt only slightly more outlandish than the laws against obscenity in the united states. The the moral principles underlying the prohibition of both, are the same : people can not be trusted to think and make decisions on their own. we must protect them from "bad thinking".
Making people work 80 hours or else not let their children have access to proper medical care or sending children to underfunded schools is something America calls "progress" and "opportunity".
yes.. there is a quantitative difference between the american fascism and egyptian fascism, islamofacism as you call it, hitlers or mousillini's fascism.. But from where I'm standing its all fascism to me. if an individul american decides to fight fascism at home rather than abroad, I applaud their efforts and so should you.
stop bullshitting yourself into thinking that people ought to fixate on far off problems they can't understand when they are being faced with glaring ones at home.
If you take peanut butter and spread it you dont get jam. The united states can NOT spread democracy or freedom.. it is LACKING IN BOTH. Its spreading neoliberalism, corporatocracy, greed and fear.
"If everyone is forced to use these lamps, and they cannot be taken back to the store for recycling....."
You just proposed the solution to your own problem. Put a deposit on the bulbs and legislate that the retailer must accept them back in return for the deposit. The deposit can be fairly substantial (even several dollars per bulb) which would encourage compliance. Unlike sodapop where you are likely to feel thirsty at any time of day and want to buy a drink. A person is much less likely to suddenly have the urge to buy a light bulb, not to mention no family is going to go through 24 lightbulbs a week or something (these things last a LONG time), so bringing them back to the store is much less inconcenienve and with the higher deposit more likely to be complied with.
In addition to the deposit the usual fines for improperly disposing of hazardous wastes should be enforced more rigourously. As once retailers are obligated to take the bulbs back, there is no excuse for anyone to ever discard these bulbs unsafely.
since these bulbs save so much money on electricity there is headroom to come up with a decent solution which is still economically viable. At the end of the day these bulbs last a really long time compared to incandescents, and the present legeslations comming in pave the way for future legislation mandating long lasting bulbs.
we have been living in a disposer society.. with financial incentives to make products which break quickly and must be replaced.. these kinds of modes of artificially creating demand must come to an end because they are not environmentally sustainable, and the only way is via legislation.
perhaps via some kind of magic the economy can grow forever like our capitalist economic theory requires to sustain itself. But the environment certainly can't. We know that now, so we must act. It is our moral duty and responsibility.
leaving it to future generations to solve the problems we create flies in the face of the moral codes espoused by both the right and the left.
Its not like flourescent lighting is new. You dont dispose of them in 16,000 meters of soil, you recycle them!
And where was this philanthropist when flourescent bulbs were introduced into the market? I didn't see him calling for them to be banned.
As for breaking bulbs perhaps if this is enough of an issue they could put those bulbs inside some of that indestructable plastic that they package ear buds or compact flash cards in. You know, the ones which requires the jaws of life to get opened.
For that matter, the bulbs COME packaged in the very same material, you can sit there dropping it all day and it wont break. it would be rather trivial to make bulbs in a bubble of the same material which would make them virtually indestructable to accidental leakage short of running them over with your car or stabbing them with a ginsu knife, and decrease the environmental impact from accidental breakage to minimal levels. The recycling issue can be easily handled with regulations requiring deposits for the bulbs, similar to pop bottles. Since these bulbs save so much money on power costs there is some room to implement a robust solution and still make economic sense.
The new laws "against incandescents" are generally written to simply require a certain degree of efficiency. Manufacturers are free to use incandescence if they can figure out a way to do it efficiently (which being pretty much physically impossible will likely never happen). However, as it is, no one is mandating CFL, they are simply banning inefficient light sources. LED's can be used. and who knows what will be invented next.
"Even the worst case scenarios aren't exactly that catastrophic, at least not for us in the 1st world, and will be, if anything, just a minor inconvience."
who cares what happens to a bunch of poor uneducated negroes, jews, spics and homosexuals, as long as us church going, tax paying white folks is OK.
"I'm far more comfortable with the idea of God as an entity wholly outside spacetime, subject to totally different laws if indeed subject to any at all, and free to inspect and perhaps to amend the whole four (or more) dimensional extent of the Universe at will. Put him in time and either you elevate time beyond the Universe of relativistic spacetime into God's domain, or you confine God within the Universe with the rest of us."
And since you are comfortable with this idea, I suppose that makes it more probable?
"No, the religious nut-cases do that. They are the ones you always hear about in the media. You don't hear about the millions of reasonable, open-minded religious people who are capable of realizing that the Bible doesn't actually say how old the earth is and Genesis 1 was meant to be poetic rather than a scientific account of how God created the universe."
"That's right. All we need is the technology that would allow us to go back in time to just before the Universe was created, and observe what happens."
"Now, rediculous stuff comes from the other side as well; but when incredibly smart and esteemed scientists like Hawking make such statements that show an animosity toward and lack of understanding of religion, it might antagonize people. If only people on both sides would stop the cheap shots and name calling..."
Proving the bible is wrong wont antagonize religious people enough?
"News flash: The United States could declare open season on Israel, withdraw from all Middle Eastern bases and force all American oil companies out of the Middle East, and the terrorists would not only not quit, they'd take it as a sign that their tactics were working and they'd redouble their efforts."
So basically what you are saying is that The United States has already lost the war and the only thing keeping the hoards of barbarian terrorists from storming the beaches is that they are under the mistaken impression that their tactics aren't working?
"I'm no fan of Bush or his policies, but despite their idiocy, they aren't nearly as stupid as appeasement."
Appeasing the citizens of the United States of America.... haha ha what a dumb idea.
1: Einstein was a mainstream scientist. He may have pursued some branches of scientific thought that others thought were lost causes - and in fact HE LOST some of them. But he was a mainstream scientist. He made specific testable predictions with relativity as required. And when the scientific evidence proved him wrong (i.e. he thought the universe was constant and unchanging and devised a cosmological constant until Edward Hubble discovered it was expanding) he ammended his theories to fit the evidence (he dropped the cosmological constant).
2: Quantum Mechanics was proposed by mainstream scientists.. and you are seeming to contradict yourself by citing Einstein as evidence that it is non-mainstream since you call him a non-mainstream scientist in #1. In any event.. quantum mechanics was not discovered by some quack in his bathtub. It was discovered by mainstream scientists and proven using the scientific method. Einstein also didn't merely SCOFF at quantum mechanics as bad science... he tried to prove it wrong using logic. And when he was shown that his argument was flawed, he was disturbed and didn't like it, but he didn't call quantum mechanics bad science. He just insisted he was sure it was wrong and that somehow someday someone was going to prove it.
3. Darwin was a purely a mainstream scientist. He is about as mainstream as you get, and even made major contributions to the scientific method itself. He helped to define mainstream science.
4: String theory in every incarnation was researched by mainstream scientists... and they ADMIT that currently they can't prove it, but are refining and have some experiments which may yeild results soon. They aren't trying to spin hocus pocus they are trying to proceed using the mainstream scientific method. Briane Greene who is a major proponent of string theory is a national bestseller and his book The Fabric of the Cosmos was Discover Magazine's book of the year. He is hardly being tarred and chicken feathered.
In the early day string theory was not widely accepted because it was SERIOUSLY DEFFECTIVE and appeared to be quite probably nothing more than a mathematical curiosity. Quite much like many other theories which did in fact turn out to be nothing more than mathematical curiosities.
5. This is not an example of non-mainstream science. This is an example of a wealthy scientist getting more attention than a scientist of modest means. None the less.. this is all mainstream science.
6. Periodic Table - I'm not a chemistry buff, but the only evidence I can find of the periodic table being scoffed was John Newlands's version which was wrong and is no longer used. I can't find any evidence that the periodic table we use today had major controversy except that 2 slightly different versions were invented independantly by 2 main-stream scientists.. one strictly by atomic mass, and another almost strictly by atomic mass but some elements out of order on the basis of their chemical properties (later vindicated by the discovery of electronic structure). I am not sure what this says about non-mainstream science however.
7. Freud - The father of psychoanalysis. Here is a non mainstream scientist who's theories are still taught and idealized although there is no scientific basis for them whatsoever. Part of the problem you get when you let people get Arts Degrees in psychology. None the less... psychoanalysis *IS* bad science. This only goes to show that you can easily get your bad science accepted if you were the first person to ever bother studying some field. This his theories are all bunk they dont constitute a breakthrough.
8. Edwin Howard Armstrong was an engineer, not a scientist. And his controversy was primarily patent disputes, not scientific disputes. No one tried to debunk FM radio as bad science. Rather it was a threat to the AM radio industry and as usual you know what happens when someone's business model is threatened. FM radio was not a breakthrough.
I'm in Canada. And in Canada you can be jailed for much longer than 2 years for interferring with someone's lawnmower if you do it in a way that MIGHT cause bodily harm. If it actually causes death you are looking at life.
Obviously changing your friend's round lawnmower weels with cubes, is something of a funny joke, and probably harmless and in theory you may be aquitted on the legal defense of "prank". (which sometimes works)
But tampering with a lawnmower is similar to tampering with a car. How would you feel if someone cut the break line of your automobile? Or put sand in your transmission fluid?
That is similar to a DOS attack.
Whether anyone actually gets 2 years is not the same thing as having a 2 year maximum sentence.
I'm sure that a DOS attack on some fairly worthless service that didn't cause any real harm would not land someone 2 years on their first conviction.
But if you (for example) cause 911 service to stop working across the entire city by doing a DOS attack on some telephone routing computer... 2 years seems rather lenient. It all comes down to the specific facts of the case.
(which is why I utterly loath "minimum sentences")
But my point was... laws against tampering with machines belonging to other people ALREADY EXIST. So why did they need to create a new one? And why would it even be newsworthy?
"I think I should reiterate this: you need to be more careful posting about things you don't understand. Not only are you embarrassing yourself, but you're giving bad legal advice."
I'm not embarassing myself because what I'm saying is correct. You keep changing the legal scenario and wont address it the way I'm stating it. You are attacking a straw man. You know that amazon's position can not be that the contract is VOID because according to the article Amazon is going ahead and billing peoples credit cards for what it deems is a corrected price. Amazons position is not that its own obligations under the contract are anulled, it is claiming that the PURCHASERS obligations are AUGMENTED. This is something completely different. Further the principle of unilateral mistake can not be used to reimburse amazon for doing something that has already happened, it is to free amazon from obligation now that its noticed the mistake. But once I transfer ownership of a DVD to you the DVD is presumptively yours. Its history. That fact that Amazon had no obligation to do something, doesn't change the fact that IT DID IT. And you didn't defraud Amazon. Amazon had just as much if not MORE opportunity that you did to notice some alleged mistake and it forces you to enter the contract in a specific way using a specific computer system under its own control.
Finally the principle requires that the other party have reason to be aware of the mistake. In this case you have no reason to be aware that amazon is making a mistake. You consistantly rely on amazon to perform all the calculations for you, and you have no opportunity to ammend or provide your own figures. In fact EVERYONE relies on amazon's calculations, and they perform thousands upon thousands of those calculations all the time. It is perfectly reasonable to rely on amazons calculations if you wish, and if you trust them then you have no reason to know they are wrong. But if they were wrong Amazon also had an additional opportunity to look at them and it would have done so before charging your credit card and obviously it reaffirmed its position that their was not mistake.
In my opinion if Amazon tries to enforce your interpretation of the contract it WILL LOSE. I believe it will not be able to convince the court that it made a mistake before but isn't making one again; That it actually ever made a mistake in the first place; That the purchaser had reason to know it was a mistake.
The court will also not find that the purchasers obligation under a contract can be augmented on the basis of unilateral mistake. If Amazon took any unilateral steps to try to imply that the purchaser OWES Amazon money then the court will find that Amazon DID transfer ownership of the DVD to the purchaser. (afterall.. if they have not transfered it to you.. why would amazon take a position that you are obligated to pay for it?)
If amazon acted in perfect good faith and took no action other than attempt to repossess the DVD then the court would allow the repossession to occur if the DVD's still existed and it found that there was a mistake, and the purchaser had reason to be aware of the mistake (which I doubt it would find). However I believe the court will not award legal costs to Amazon. If you lost or destroyed the DVD's AFTER amazon notified you of the mistake then the court may hold you liable on the basis that you did it because you wanted to cause harm, and the court may actually award legal costs (this would only be if it was going to allow reposession at all, which I doubt for the above stated reasons). But if you lost of destroyed the DVD's before Amazon notified you then the court may or may not hold you harmless depending on whether it finds you were objectively aware (having reason to be aware is not always sufficient to convince the court that you were aware).
also it is my belief that amazon will not attempt to force anyone to pay anything other than what the contract says because in my dealings with Amazon they are quite willing to swallow
"The speed of light is a real and unbreakable rule as a result nothing more than 4 or 5 light years away is reachable."
How did you arrive at that specific number?
"Sure- you *might* be able to theoretically build a ship that could go further but all politics is local. Look at our politics- could we gather the will to build a 10 trillion dollar multi-generation star ship?"
1: How did you pick that specific pricetag?
2: yes. Why not? We spend almost that much chasing after non existant WMD's.
3: you are not talking about burning 10 trillian dollars. What you are talking about is creating employment for 10 million highly educated employees for 10 years.
(or appropriatly scaled up numbers of unskilled workers)
"The most preprominent problem with non-mainstream science and results is that it is a political minefield. Anything rieking esoteric in the scientific community is suppressed and/or ridiculed by the peers. This is a common problem. It is much easier to argue "it's bad science" than to disprove one's results if your own field of expertise is threatened in the slightest way."
Is it a common problem? How common is it?
Can you list 10 major scientific breakthroughs made in the past 300 years by "non-mainstream" scientists who were ridiculed and supressed and specifically labeled "bad science" by the scientific community.
This seems like a very reasonable maximum sentence. I am sure I can get 2 years for interferring with someones lawnmower or hairdrier in most jurisdictions. So I'm not sure this is even newsworthy. In fact.. I'm quite suprised this isn't already included in some kind of mischeif law thats already on the books and has been on the books for the past 500 years.
Its basically always been illegal to screw around with someone elses machinery.
"You really shouldn't talk about the law if you have no clue as to how it works. Look up "unilateral mistake" sometime, or see Section 153/154 of the restatement 2d of contracts. Notice the key language is going to be whether "the other party had reason to know of the mistake." There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
The rules you cite may excuse Amazon from its obligation to fulfil the promises it made while it was mistaken about certain facts which the you were aware of. (i.e. they could refuse to ship the DVD for $0.00) However that is NOT what we are talking about.
You are talking about an obligation on the part of the other party to compensate Amazon after the fact for losses Amazon claims it suffered as a result of its own actions it took as a result of its own mistake. You are saying that after Amazon transferred lawful ownership of the DVD to you in accordance with the contract terms, that now you have to PAY amazon some DIFFERENT amount of money.
How much should you pay? What about $1 million? Who picks this price?
the situation those rules apply to are whether or not Amazon is obligated to FULFIL its part of the contract having noticed a unilateral error that you should have been aware of (very doubtful since you rely on amazon's software as a matter of course to calculate money's owed and you are NOT GIVEN ANY OPPORTUNITY TO ENTER THOSE FIGURES YOURSELF). It was NOT obligated to fulfill its promises (i.e. ship you the DVD). Had it noticed the error PRIOR to shipping the DVD it could have cancelled the contract. In all likelyhood the fact that you have no opportunity to enter in the prices yourself will cause the court to find that you could NOT have known about the mistake because you never would have bothered calculating any prices yourself and that therefore Amazon is OBLIGATED to fulfil the contract regardless of the price.
However whatever would happen in court, the rules you cite do not impose duty on you, they provide an escape from obligation to Amazon in the contract.
In any event Amazon has no power to correct the contract unilaterally, and it would lose in court if it tried to sue you for the alleged CORRECT price. (it might be able to get the DVD back at its own expense if the court found that ownership never changed hands).
But if you want to show me the rule that empowers unilateral ammendmend of a contract to fix such a mistake... please do.
The law sees no difference here; That is what matters. You can't change the law by whinging to the DA and to the court. You must take it to the legislature to put specific exemptions and immunities in the statutes.
Even if you convince 1 single prosecutor to drop a case.... what happens to the NEXT prosecution? And the one after that?
The law is not supposed to be about who has the greatest pep-squad to raise a stink on a case by case basis.
The proper rememdy for this situation remains REPEALING THE LAW or else PUTTING IN SPECIFIC EXCEPTIONS to allow children to make child pornography for personal use.
That is what this is about isn't it?
You believe that children have the right to make child porn for personal use and sharing with their friends.
" law was clearly intended to prohibit adults taking sexual pictures of children, not children taking children pictures of children. "
1: where does it say that in the law? 2: If you are right then how come its illegal to possess sexual pictures of children even if a child took the picture?
Slashdot Mirror
"What you are doing now is pining for the chance to see if there's more to life than what you've already accomplished.
There is. And you already have it."
Bullshit. that is a contradiction. What kind of a superhero is so awsome that they can accomplish all there is to do in life and be simultaneously such a retard that they dont know it.
If you already have it, then kill yourself. why the hell would you want to just hold on and slowly watch the world crumble around you while you sit uselessly and smug in your knowledge that you HAVE it? explain the meaning of that? yes.. it would be great for your boss if you just kept on cranking away.. afterall.. thats what its all about right?
life is not about stagnation. Its not about HAVING. its about growing. Its about seeing, learning and teaching.. and in the end its about dying. And it doesn't matter if you die broke because in the end. YOU DIE. You may as well die right now if you've done all you are ever going to do.
Don't be a chicken shit. success is measured by challenges overcome, deeds accomplished, inventions and creations, not by dollars. I look at people 10 to 20 years older than me who have basically decided 'ohh.. my time to live is over' and it is beyond pathetic. It is the very definition of OLD. And the same time some people that age dont have that attitude.. and they dont seem old in any way. you can lose everything you have at ANY time. and in the end you WILL.
Perhaps you'll have an interesting tale to tell when you are 70 so you wont be completely useless.
if every man experiences a longing to find something MORE as they get older perhaps that is a clue. There *IS* something more.. and whoever tells you that you should just take it easy is killing you. They aren't a friend. They are a parasite holding you back.
lets say someone works their ass off then hits 65 and is staring down a whole wad of cash.. then what? go and pay people to shuttle you around like an idiot for the rest of your days? Why did you live at all if that was all you ever thought to accomplish? sit around and uselessly accumulate for your entire life, and not only are you destroying your own life.. but you are destroying the lives of everyone around you by being a horrible role model. you and all your loved ones are being diminished.. with that philosophy you may as well all be oxen, pulling the plow. nothing more.
Go live.. be human.
"Not going to work. How are you going to detect which car it's being broadcast from?"
... you'd never be able to reliably locate which car was transmitting what."
because its the direction from which the signal is being broadcast.
" You're talking about reliably pinpointing a moving target that's probably only putting out a sub-second burst, along with a lot of other cars that are also transmitting things."
on second thought.. you're right. Obviously this problem is utterly unsolvable. call the whole thing off.
" Not to mention that they're all metal objects, so the multipath would be hideous
yes. no one's ever solved that damn multipath problem before. especially with digital information and with timestamps... for that matter.. getting cars to transmit traffic conditions itself is obviously impossible.. how the hell are you going to get a car to know the traffic conditions.. its not human!
"" Sure, you could serialize the transmitters, but it would be trivial to spoof someone else's."
yes.. because the only way to determine which car isn't hampered by the false information would be to check everyones ID.
simply observing the car driving normally while everyone else slows down wouldn't give it away.
we should also get rid of fire alarms in buildings.. most of them are false alarms anyway.
"Except we do have, on the face of it, good reasons to believe that a legal drinking age of 21 is effective at reducing drinking among minors."
It also prevents adults under 21 from being able to drink when they have every natural right to, but who cares about that.
"There is significant brain development occurring up to even 18. "
right so public school should be mandatory up to 18 shouldn't it? And if it isn't mandatory up to 18, then where do we get off banning alcohol? its hypocritical. Futhermore, the drinking age is 21.. NOT 18.. but its the same difference I guess.. whats 3 extra years of having your rights trampled. the best way to start life as an adult is to be treated like a minor.
"If you are yourself 21 or older, I feel sorry for you that you still see your parents and past teachers as involved in some sort of conspiracy to maliciously oppress and control you."
I'm over 30. And it isn't a conspiracy. And my parents and teachers couldn't care less. They weren't part of any conspiracy. What it is, is apathy and cowardice amongst politicians. At 18 a person is legally an adult and legally they should be responsible to deciding if they want to drink. thats it.
at least over here with a drinking age of 19 there is only 1 year of flippant and unjust denial of liberties.. its almost trifling enough not to care about. But there is plenty of reason to believe that the prohibition on alcohol leads to drug use amongst kids. So what would you prefer? youths drinking as youths have done for thousands of years, or youths popping pills? alcoholism is much harder to hide than drug addiction. yes.. its a problem. but life is full of problems.. infringing the rights of 18, 19, and 20 year olds is not a rational or effective solution.
but hey.. alcohol bans work in islamic nations so why not in america?
"but don't let that stop you from going apeshit over molehills while you ignore mountains
mountains of injustice that leads to the kind of islamofascism the world is having troubles with now"
The united states is a pretty fucking giant molehill. Its one of the largest countries in the world and the single largest economy.
I dont ignore any injustice. What you are asking people to do is to ignore the giant "molehill" they have some influence over, because there is a mediocre sized "mountain" on the other side of the earth that they can't do anything about. They can't do anything about it because the Execute Branch of the United States of America has claimed sole jurisdiction over US foreign policy.
The US is capturing people without any due process whatsoever and turning them over to countries such as syria or egypt to evade the bill of rights. The US decides to go ahead and resume the nuclear arms race (the ultimate crime against the all humanity).
the US is holding prisoners without any charges or legal rights.
being jail for 5 years for blasphemy is less of a human rights violation than being jailed for 5 years with no charge whatsoever.
The laws against blasphemy in egypt only slightly more outlandish than the laws against obscenity in the united states. The the moral principles underlying the prohibition of both, are the same : people can not be trusted to think and make decisions on their own. we must protect them from "bad thinking".
Making people work 80 hours or else not let their children have access to proper medical care or sending children to underfunded schools is something America calls "progress" and "opportunity".
yes.. there is a quantitative difference between the american fascism and egyptian fascism, islamofacism as you call it, hitlers or mousillini's fascism.. But from where I'm standing its all fascism to me. if an individul american decides to fight fascism at home rather than abroad, I applaud their efforts and so should you.
stop bullshitting yourself into thinking that people ought to fixate on far off problems they can't understand when they are being faced with glaring ones at home.
If you take peanut butter and spread it you dont get jam. The united states can NOT spread democracy or freedom.. it is LACKING IN BOTH. Its spreading neoliberalism, corporatocracy, greed and fear.
"right now, in egypt, there is a guy in prison for 5 years for saying "unislamic" things. 5 years. for a blog. that's totalitarianism. right there"
And anything which isn't as bad as Egypt isn't totalitarian right?
"If everyone is forced to use these lamps, and they cannot be taken back to the store for recycling....."
You just proposed the solution to your own problem. Put a deposit on the bulbs and legislate that the retailer must accept them back in return for the deposit. The deposit can be fairly substantial (even several dollars per bulb) which would encourage compliance. Unlike sodapop where you are likely to feel thirsty at any time of day and want to buy a drink. A person is much less likely to suddenly have the urge to buy a light bulb, not to mention no family is going to go through 24 lightbulbs a week or something (these things last a LONG time), so bringing them back to the store is much less inconcenienve and with the higher deposit more likely to be complied with.
In addition to the deposit the usual fines for improperly disposing of hazardous wastes should be enforced more rigourously. As once retailers are obligated to take the bulbs back, there is no excuse for anyone to ever discard these bulbs unsafely.
since these bulbs save so much money on electricity there is headroom to come up with a decent solution which is still economically viable. At the end of the day these bulbs last a really long time compared to incandescents, and the present legeslations comming in pave the way for future legislation mandating long lasting bulbs.
we have been living in a disposer society.. with financial incentives to make products which break quickly and must be replaced.. these kinds of modes of artificially creating demand must come to an end because they are not environmentally sustainable, and the only way is via legislation.
perhaps via some kind of magic the economy can grow forever like our capitalist economic theory requires to sustain itself. But the environment certainly can't. We know that now, so we must act. It is our moral duty and responsibility.
leaving it to future generations to solve the problems we create flies in the face of the moral codes espoused by both the right and the left.
"The 'net has grown nicely without government meddling;"
when did that imaginary scenario happen?
Its not like flourescent lighting is new. You dont dispose of them in 16,000 meters of soil, you recycle them!
And where was this philanthropist when flourescent bulbs were introduced into the market? I didn't see him calling for them to be banned.
As for breaking bulbs perhaps if this is enough of an issue they could put those bulbs inside some of that indestructable plastic that they package ear buds or compact flash cards in. You know, the ones which requires the jaws of life to get opened.
For that matter, the bulbs COME packaged in the very same material, you can sit there dropping it all day and it wont break. it would be rather trivial to make bulbs in a bubble of the same material which would make them virtually indestructable to accidental leakage short of running them over with your car or stabbing them with a ginsu knife, and decrease the environmental impact from accidental breakage to minimal levels. The recycling issue can be easily handled with regulations requiring deposits for the bulbs, similar to pop bottles. Since these bulbs save so much money on power costs there is some room to implement a robust solution and still make economic sense.
The new laws "against incandescents" are generally written to simply require a certain degree of efficiency. Manufacturers are free to use incandescence if they can figure out a way to do it efficiently (which being pretty much physically impossible will likely never happen). However, as it is, no one is mandating CFL, they are simply banning inefficient light sources. LED's can be used. and who knows what will be invented next.
"Even the worst case scenarios aren't exactly that catastrophic, at least not for us in the 1st world, and will be, if anything, just a minor inconvience."
who cares what happens to a bunch of poor uneducated negroes, jews, spics and homosexuals, as long as us church going, tax paying white folks is OK.
"I'm far more comfortable with the idea of God as an entity wholly outside spacetime, subject to totally different laws if indeed subject to any at all, and free to inspect and perhaps to amend the whole four (or more) dimensional extent of the Universe at will. Put him in time and either you elevate time beyond the Universe of relativistic spacetime into God's domain, or you confine God within the Universe with the rest of us."
And since you are comfortable with this idea, I suppose that makes it more probable?
"No, the religious nut-cases do that. They are the ones you always hear about in the media. You don't hear about the millions of reasonable, open-minded religious people who are capable of realizing that the Bible doesn't actually say how old the earth is and Genesis 1 was meant to be poetic rather than a scientific account of how God created the universe."
So the Bible is false?
"That's right. All we need is the technology that would allow us to go back in time to just before the Universe was created, and observe what happens."
Is that the only way?
"Now, rediculous stuff comes from the other side as well; but when incredibly smart and esteemed scientists like Hawking make such statements that show an animosity toward and lack of understanding of religion, it might antagonize people. If only people on both sides would stop the cheap shots and name calling..."
Proving the bible is wrong wont antagonize religious people enough?
"News flash: The United States could declare open season on Israel, withdraw from all Middle Eastern bases and force all American oil companies out of the Middle East, and the terrorists would not only not quit, they'd take it as a sign that their tactics were working and they'd redouble their efforts."
.... haha ha what a dumb idea.
So basically what you are saying is that The United States has already lost the war and the only thing keeping the hoards of barbarian terrorists from storming the beaches is that they are under the mistaken impression that their tactics aren't working?
"I'm no fan of Bush or his policies, but despite their idiocy, they aren't nearly as stupid as appeasement."
Appeasing the citizens of the United States of America
Well I have some serious issues with your list:
1: Einstein was a mainstream scientist. He may have pursued some branches of scientific thought that others thought were lost causes - and in fact HE LOST some of them. But he was a mainstream scientist. He made specific testable predictions with relativity as required. And when the scientific evidence proved him wrong (i.e. he thought the universe was constant and unchanging and devised a cosmological constant until Edward Hubble discovered it was expanding) he ammended his theories to fit the evidence (he dropped the cosmological constant).
2: Quantum Mechanics was proposed by mainstream scientists.. and you are seeming to contradict yourself by citing Einstein as evidence that it is non-mainstream since you call him a non-mainstream scientist in #1. In any event.. quantum mechanics was not discovered by some quack in his bathtub. It was discovered by mainstream scientists and proven using the scientific method. Einstein also didn't merely SCOFF at quantum mechanics as bad science... he tried to prove it wrong using logic. And when he was shown that his argument was flawed, he was disturbed and didn't like it, but he didn't call quantum mechanics bad science. He just insisted he was sure it was wrong and that somehow someday someone was going to prove it.
3. Darwin was a purely a mainstream scientist. He is about as mainstream as you get, and even made major contributions to the scientific method itself. He helped to define mainstream science.
4: String theory in every incarnation was researched by mainstream scientists... and they ADMIT that currently they can't prove it, but are refining and have some experiments which may yeild results soon. They aren't trying to spin hocus pocus they are trying to proceed using the mainstream scientific method. Briane Greene who is a major proponent of string theory is a national bestseller and his book The Fabric of the Cosmos was Discover Magazine's book of the year. He is hardly being tarred and chicken feathered.
In the early day string theory was not widely accepted because it was SERIOUSLY DEFFECTIVE and appeared to be quite probably nothing more than a mathematical curiosity. Quite much like many other theories which did in fact turn out to be nothing more than mathematical curiosities.
5. This is not an example of non-mainstream science. This is an example of a wealthy scientist getting more attention than a scientist of modest means. None the less.. this is all mainstream science.
6. Periodic Table - I'm not a chemistry buff, but the only evidence I can find of the periodic table being scoffed was John Newlands's version which was wrong and is no longer used. I can't find any evidence that the periodic table we use today had major controversy except that 2 slightly different versions were invented independantly by 2 main-stream scientists.. one strictly by atomic mass, and another almost strictly by atomic mass but some elements out of order on the basis of their chemical properties (later vindicated by the discovery of electronic structure). I am not sure what this says about non-mainstream science however.
7. Freud - The father of psychoanalysis. Here is a non mainstream scientist who's theories are still taught and idealized although there is no scientific basis for them whatsoever. Part of the problem you get when you let people get Arts Degrees in psychology. None the less... psychoanalysis *IS* bad science. This only goes to show that you can easily get your bad science accepted if you were the first person to ever bother studying some field. This his theories are all bunk they dont constitute a breakthrough.
8. Edwin Howard Armstrong was an engineer, not a scientist. And his controversy was primarily patent disputes, not scientific disputes. No one tried to debunk FM radio as bad science. Rather it was a threat to the AM radio industry and as usual you know what happens when someone's business model is threatened. FM radio was not a breakthrough.
I'm in Canada. And in Canada you can be jailed for much longer than 2 years for interferring with someone's lawnmower if you do it in a way that MIGHT cause bodily harm. If it actually causes death you are looking at life.
Obviously changing your friend's round lawnmower weels with cubes, is something of a funny joke, and probably harmless and in theory you may be aquitted on the legal defense of "prank". (which sometimes works)
But tampering with a lawnmower is similar to tampering with a car. How would you feel if someone cut the break line of your automobile? Or put sand in your transmission fluid?
That is similar to a DOS attack.
Whether anyone actually gets 2 years is not the same thing as having a 2 year maximum sentence.
I'm sure that a DOS attack on some fairly worthless service that didn't cause any real harm would not land someone 2 years on their first conviction.
But if you (for example) cause 911 service to stop working across the entire city by doing a DOS attack on some telephone routing computer... 2 years seems rather lenient. It all comes down to the specific facts of the case.
(which is why I utterly loath "minimum sentences")
But my point was... laws against tampering with machines belonging to other people ALREADY EXIST. So why did they need to create a new one? And why would it even be newsworthy?
(politics)
"I think I should reiterate this: you need to be more careful posting about things you don't understand. Not only are you embarrassing yourself, but you're giving bad legal advice."
I'm not embarassing myself because what I'm saying is correct. You keep changing the legal scenario and wont address it the way I'm stating it. You are attacking a straw man. You know that amazon's position can not be that the contract is VOID because according to the article Amazon is going ahead and billing peoples credit cards for what it deems is a corrected price. Amazons position is not that its own obligations under the contract are anulled, it is claiming that the PURCHASERS obligations are AUGMENTED. This is something completely different. Further the principle of unilateral mistake can not be used to reimburse amazon for doing something that has already happened, it is to free amazon from obligation now that its noticed the mistake. But once I transfer ownership of a DVD to you the DVD is presumptively yours. Its history. That fact that Amazon had no obligation to do something, doesn't change the fact that IT DID IT. And you didn't defraud Amazon. Amazon had just as much if not MORE opportunity that you did to notice some alleged mistake and it forces you to enter the contract in a specific way using a specific computer system under its own control.
Finally the principle requires that the other party have reason to be aware of the mistake. In this case you have no reason to be aware that amazon is making a mistake. You consistantly rely on amazon to perform all the calculations for you, and you have no opportunity to ammend or provide your own figures. In fact EVERYONE relies on amazon's calculations, and they perform thousands upon thousands of those calculations all the time. It is perfectly reasonable to rely on amazons calculations if you wish, and if you trust them then you have no reason to know they are wrong. But if they were wrong Amazon also had an additional opportunity to look at them and it would have done so before charging your credit card and obviously it reaffirmed its position that their was not mistake.
In my opinion if Amazon tries to enforce your interpretation of the contract it WILL LOSE. I believe it will not be able to convince the court that it made a mistake before but isn't making one again; That it actually ever made a mistake in the first place; That the purchaser had reason to know it was a mistake.
The court will also not find that the purchasers obligation under a contract can be augmented on the basis of unilateral mistake. If Amazon took any unilateral steps to try to imply that the purchaser OWES Amazon money then the court will find that Amazon DID transfer ownership of the DVD to the purchaser. (afterall.. if they have not transfered it to you.. why would amazon take a position that you are obligated to pay for it?)
If amazon acted in perfect good faith and took no action other than attempt to repossess the DVD then the court would allow the repossession to occur if the DVD's still existed and it found that there was a mistake, and the purchaser had reason to be aware of the mistake (which I doubt it would find). However I believe the court will not award legal costs to Amazon. If you lost or destroyed the DVD's AFTER amazon notified you of the mistake then the court may hold you liable on the basis that you did it because you wanted to cause harm, and the court may actually award legal costs (this would only be if it was going to allow reposession at all, which I doubt for the above stated reasons). But if you lost of destroyed the DVD's before Amazon notified you then the court may or may not hold you harmless depending on whether it finds you were objectively aware (having reason to be aware is not always sufficient to convince the court that you were aware).
also it is my belief that amazon will not attempt to force anyone to pay anything other than what the contract says because in my dealings with Amazon they are quite willing to swallow
and if you thought that made no sense.. you are right.
"Besides why would an alien race need the whole galaxy? "
Because its better having 1/2 the galaxy..
"The speed of light is a real and unbreakable rule as a result nothing more than 4 or 5 light years away is reachable."
How did you arrive at that specific number?
"Sure- you *might* be able to theoretically build a ship that could go further but all politics is local. Look at our politics- could we gather the will to build a 10 trillion dollar multi-generation star ship?"
1: How did you pick that specific pricetag?
2: yes. Why not? We spend almost that much chasing after non existant WMD's.
3: you are not talking about burning 10 trillian dollars. What you are talking about is creating employment for 10 million highly educated employees for 10 years.
(or appropriatly scaled up numbers of unskilled workers)
4: you could do it in China for 1/10th the price.
"The most preprominent problem with non-mainstream science and results is that it is a political minefield. Anything rieking esoteric in the scientific community is suppressed and/or ridiculed by the peers. This is a common problem. It is much easier to argue "it's bad science" than to disprove one's results if your own field of expertise is threatened in the slightest way."
Is it a common problem? How common is it?
Can you list 10 major scientific breakthroughs made in the past 300 years by "non-mainstream" scientists who were ridiculed and supressed and specifically labeled "bad science" by the scientific community.
This seems like a very reasonable maximum sentence. I am sure I can get 2 years for interferring with someones lawnmower or hairdrier in most jurisdictions. So I'm not sure this is even newsworthy. In fact.. I'm quite suprised this isn't already included in some kind of mischeif law thats already on the books and has been on the books for the past 500 years.
Its basically always been illegal to screw around with someone elses machinery.
"You really shouldn't talk about the law if you have no clue as to how it works. Look up "unilateral mistake" sometime, or see Section 153/154 of the restatement 2d of contracts. Notice the key language is going to be whether "the other party had reason to know of the mistake." There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
The rules you cite may excuse Amazon from its obligation to fulfil the promises it made while it was mistaken about certain facts which the you were aware of. (i.e. they could refuse to ship the DVD for $0.00) However that is NOT what we are talking about.
You are talking about an obligation on the part of the other party to compensate Amazon after the fact for losses Amazon claims it suffered as a result of its own actions it took as a result of its own mistake. You are saying that after Amazon transferred lawful ownership of the DVD to you in accordance with the contract terms, that now you have to PAY amazon some DIFFERENT amount of money.
How much should you pay? What about $1 million? Who picks this price?
the situation those rules apply to are whether or not Amazon is obligated to FULFIL its part of the contract having noticed a unilateral error that you should have been aware of (very doubtful since you rely on amazon's software as a matter of course to calculate money's owed and you are NOT GIVEN ANY OPPORTUNITY TO ENTER THOSE FIGURES YOURSELF). It was NOT obligated to fulfill its promises (i.e. ship you the DVD). Had it noticed the error PRIOR to shipping the DVD it could have cancelled the contract. In all likelyhood the fact that you have no opportunity to enter in the prices yourself will cause the court to find that you could NOT have known about the mistake because you never would have bothered calculating any prices yourself and that therefore Amazon is OBLIGATED to fulfil the contract regardless of the price.
However whatever would happen in court, the rules you cite do not impose duty on you, they provide an escape from obligation to Amazon in the contract.
In any event Amazon has no power to correct the contract unilaterally, and it would lose in court if it tried to sue you for the alleged CORRECT price.
(it might be able to get the DVD back at its own expense if the court found that ownership never changed hands).
But if you want to show me the rule that empowers unilateral ammendmend of a contract to fix such a mistake... please do.
"You can't see the difference here?"
What does it have to do with what *I* see?
The law sees no difference here; That is what matters. You can't change the law by whinging to the DA and to the court. You must take it to the legislature to put specific exemptions and immunities in the statutes.
Even if you convince 1 single prosecutor to drop a case.... what happens to the NEXT prosecution? And the one after that?
The law is not supposed to be about who has the greatest pep-squad to raise a stink on a case by case basis.
The proper rememdy for this situation remains REPEALING THE LAW or else PUTTING IN SPECIFIC EXCEPTIONS to allow children to make child pornography for personal use.
That is what this is about isn't it?
You believe that children have the right to make child porn for personal use and sharing with their friends.
" law was clearly intended to prohibit adults taking sexual pictures of children, not children taking children pictures of children. "
1: where does it say that in the law?
2: If you are right then how come its illegal to possess sexual pictures of children even if a child took the picture?