If the gas was cheap, many would buy it. So they would have gas.
If the supply is low and the demand is high, as it is in an emergency, the price increases as demand outstrips supply. If you make the gas artificially cheap, the demand will increase to a level where it can't be met, so most people won't have gas.
You have freedom of speech, we have freedom from harassment.
You mean restriction against harassment. A freedom "from" something is not really a liberty. Recasting a restriction as a "freedom" is just statist doublespeak.
You certainly raise a good point that it's a relatively new technology and so the long term effects are somewhat unknown. However, there's currently no particular reason to think that it's not safe, even in theory. There is always the potential for some unknown and unforeseen factor to lie lurking in wait, but that's true for any new technology. The resistance to GM technology seems to mostly be based on fear of the unknown, combined with a lack of understanding of—and perhaps even a willful refusal to understand—the scientific principles behind the process.
In other words, your attempts to create a sort of Newspeak that redefines your terms to suit your argument having been exposed, you now attempt to redefine my terms to suit your argument.
Unless you want to argue that e. coli can crossbreed with wheat, there are genes that are introduced in GMO food that cannot come from cross-breeding.
You sound like the religious fanatics who claim that evolution couldn't possibly be true, because you can't explain how certain traits came up in some organisms and not others. Well, not only can I explain how it happened, I can generally explain why it happened. And knowing the why and the how, I can attempt to provide the same selection pressure on other organisms to produce the same result. Do you believe that it's impossible for traits that show up in one organism to ever show up in another? I assume you don't. Do you believe it's impossible to coerce a genetic trait into existence via selective cultivation and environmental pressure? Again, if you know anything about how bacteria evolve immunity to antibiotics, you know that's not true. Do you think it's impossible to transfer a desirable trait into a genetic line solely via selective cultivation and cross-breeding? If you know anything about botany, you know that you can indeed do so. So what makes you think you can't coerce a trait that exists in one organism into showing up in another via strictly non GM means? You obviously can do so, but it might take a very long time or a lot of luck. Genetic modifications just takes the random chance out of it, and allows you to skip the laborious and time-consuming process of doing things the traditional way. There's nothing magical about it.
My point is that, from a strict scientific perspective, there isn't really any difference between genetic modification and selective cultivation. Genetic modification is simply a way of speeding up a process that historically took centuries or even millennia to accomplish with less advanced technology.
Anyway, I've been around this site long enough to know that unpopular points of view are regularly modded down as “trolls”. Most people here, ultimately, aren't really qualified to moderate because they can't tell an actual troll from somebody who simply has a differing viewpoint. Luckily, in the fifteen years or so that I've been here I've racked up enough karma that I don't really give a damn about moderators with an agenda to push.:)
The problem is that everyone who talks about the magic of the free market is talking about a perfect market.
Now who's arguing semantics? Sorry, but you can't just move the goalposts by redefining terms as you see fit. I know of nobody who believes that the term “free market” means anything other than a market free from government regulation.
Yes, GMO at its most benign is nothing but cutting short a few generations of selective breeding. However, just like I don't need the exact breakdown of every atom in the food I buy, so I don't need a breakdown of every gene in the food I buy. It's sufficient to list out the genes that were artificially inserted and that make up the patent for the food (I'm sure you know that one of the drivers behind GMO food is because it allows for patenting food, right?).
Is your argument about health concerns or patent concerns? Because it again seems like you're trying to shift the goalposts here. Your original concern seemed to be about wanting to know if the banana was a special “glow-in-the-dark” kind, with no mention of patents. If your concern is really about the patent issues, then fine, that's your prerogative. But while you've admitted that genetic modification is nothing more than a shortcut to cross-breeding, you still haven't said what's so special about genes added using this technique that makes them somehow more relevant than other kinds of genes.
You might want to also look into "false dichotomy", "relevance in decision making" and "silence is golden."
If you had a point here, I'm not sure what it is. Either you can claim some legitimate scientific reason why genes inserted via genetic modification are different from genes inserted by cross-breeding (which you can't, because they aren't actually any different), or you have no point whatsoever.
Yes, he does. A perfect market, by definition, must be a free market, and free markets operate more efficiently with better information. You cannot logically separate the concepts into two different things... so it is YOU who are making the straw-man argument.
The claim was that perfect access to information was a cornerstone requirement of a free market. It is not. A perfect market may be a form of free market that requires perfect access to information, but that doesn't mean that a free market requires it. Logic 101 here. If every A is a kind of B, and every A has C, does every B have C? Not necessarily. If every perfect market is a free market, and every perfect market requires perfect information, does every free market require perfect information? Not necessarily. See how that works?
Again, it is YOU who do not know what you are talking about. There are EASILY identifiable differences in many GMO foods. No amount of cross-breeding on earth will insert genes from already-highly modified E. Coli into crops ("roundup-ready" corn) or otherwise cross plants and animals in such a manner. Or dissimilar animals, like jellyfish with mammals.
You are mistaken. Genes are genes. They neither know nor care which organism a specific genetic sequence arose in. Essentially any genetic sequence can be achieved in any organism given enough generations for it to arise and careful cross-breeding to isolate it. The fact that a specific mutation has arisen in one type of organism through luck of the draw shouldn't preclude us from reaping the benefits of it in others. There's no scientific rationale for the position that it should, except that it “sounds scary” to people who don't understand as much about how the science of genetics works as they think they do.
Yes, it can. First you just have to wait around a few thousand generations for the same gene to surface in the host plant. There's no reason why it couldn't or wouldn't, if you believe in the theory of evolution. Then you isolate that gene in the host plant by selective cross-breeding. It's a very slow, labor intensive process that can take many years to be successful, but there's no reason why it couldn't work. It's precisely what we've been doing for millennia. Genetic modification simply allows to reap the benefits of that labor at a much accelerated pace.
I find it interesting that one of the cornerstone requirements for a working free market - perfect access to full information - is being opposed by entities praising the free market at every turn.
You don't know what you're talking about. Perfect access to information is a condition of a perfect market, not a free market. The only condition for a free market is a lack of government regulations. Free markets do not require perfect access to anything, either as a condition to exist or in order to function properly. Your entire argument is a strawman.
It's that when I buy a banana, I want to know that this isn't a regular Chiquita banana, but the glow-in-the-dark version that is designed to keep nocturnal monkeys from eating it. In other words, I want to know what the product is that I'm buying. This bill would help me with that.
You're under the mistaken impression that there's some identifiable difference between GMO and non-GMO foods, that couldn't be achieved through natural cross-breeding techniques that have been used for thousands of years. Genetic modification just speeds up the process. Do you expect the entire genome of any fruit you buy to be mapped out for you before you decide whether or not to purchase it? If not, then your position is invalid, because just knowing that a food is “genetically modified” tells you absolutely nothing about what's actually in that food.
That's silly. So-called “genetic modification” is no different from cross-breeding that has been going on since the dawn of agriculture. Would you require a label for food that's grown using a tractor, or a computer controlled irrigation system, or some other technology that didn't exist a couple hundred years ago? What's special about this, other than that ignorant technophobes are freaked out by this particular thing for no good reason?
Read this and weep. NOBODY has the ability to just move off of nuclear power. Or any other power source for that matter. There is no such thing as "alternative energy". Global power demand is constantly increasing, even faster than population growth (in fact, as energy use increases, population tends to grow more slowly or even decline). We're going to need every watt of power we can get in the not too distant future, from nuclear sources or otherwise. This is a very foolish act on the part of Germany, that will only end up screwing them down the line as energy costs increase dramatically within 50 years, and their economy struggles to keep up. But by then, it will be too late. If Germany started building nuclear plants NOW, and continued building them at a rate that is practically impossible to manage, there's a CHANCE their economy might not end up collapsing completely within half a century.
Mark my words. People will look back on this as the beginning of the end for Germany.
At least in the 35mm film days, a point and shoot could equal an SLR using the same film stock
Not exactly. The primary reason people would pay big bucks for the SLR camera is because of the difference in lens selection and quality. Other than artistic skill, there's no single component that is going to make a bigger difference to the look of the photograph. All other things being roughly equal, a $1,000 lens on an SLR camera is going to be capable of producing a better photograph than a $99 point and shoot, from a technical perspective at least. There are some photographs that you can get with an SLR that you'll never be able to get with a point and shoot. High speed action, or extremely low/high depth of field shots, for example.
an artist using a point and shoot could take a better picture than some dumb rich guy with a thousand bucks of SLR
This is absolutely true. Still is, even with digital.
Sadly there doesn't seem to be a huge market for small, high quality compacts.
Sure there is. In fact, that's probably the largest market segment for digital cameras. Quality is getting better all the time, even as camera sizes are shrinking. Heck, they're starting to stick cameras in phones that rival the high end consumer digital cameras of only a few years ago.
I think it could be done with no more than two. The technology behind the iPod touchscreen is capable of recognizing the shape and size of a touch point. So you should be able to determine the type of piece with a single point, and you'd just need another point for orientation. I think only oval shapes can be recognized, but if asymmetrical shapes are possible (or if you had pieces that were symmetrical and limited the forward direction to a 180 degree arc), you could do it with only one.
But if you had access to the low level touchscreen interface, it may not even be a problem. I believe the iPod filters out points below a certain size threshold as random noise. But if you know that you're looking for certain patterns, you could separate these from the noise yourself and there would theoretically be no limit to the number of recognizable shapes.
The presence of competition is not a necessary condition for a "free market". This is not open for debate--this is a simple matter of the definition of the term. What you might be thinking of is a "perfect market", which is a theoretical concept in economics that is not the same thing as a "free market". Go read up about it on Wikipedia and you'll see what I mean.
The goal of government and society is to benefit most people most of the time, to the detriment of the few individuals who violate the social contract -- in this case, those who have enriched themselves massively at the expense of everyone else, using ethics which are questionable at best.
So you want to legislate morality. We must all believe in your ethics, and anyone who doesn't follow your ethical code must be punished, and those who do should benefit. Funny how similar the views of the right-wingers and left-wingers are when you reduce them to their cores.
You generally believe the purpose of the government is to benefit people you like at the expense of people you don't like. You can qualify it however you want, but there is nothing noble about forcibly taking from those who have what you want, simply because they're not part of your favored group. If you wanted to say that the purpose of government is to prevent people from unjustly enriching themselves to the detriment of others, then perhaps we could agree. Then it would just be a matter of determining what is "just". But you seem to believe that some people are intrinsically entitled be enriched at the expense of others who intrinsically deserve to be punished, and are willing to use government powers to forcibly do so--after all, government powers derive entirely from the fact that the government has a monopoly on force.
The government should no more be benefitting the CEO of the company than the janitor. Personally, I don't believe forcing others to benefit you against their will is right, no matter what sort of populist veneer you put on it.
How do you propose to do so? Perhaps pass laws saying that Comcast must do X or must not do Y? And do you expect to do this for every complaint people have, until they're no longer "crap"? And how do you enforce these laws? If they refuse or are unable to comply with your whims, do you simply revoke their license to operate? Or do you sanction them until you force them to comply? What about the increased operating costs involved in complying with your regulations (or paying the sanctions)? These costs would necessarily be passed on to the consumer. Would you then regulate the price they can charge?
Unless you believe resources are infinite, any of these regulations must necessarily reduce the quality of service for a given price, or increase the price to consumers. Alternatively, if the service provider is unwilling or unable to comply with the regulations, it would result in the cessation of service entirely. Can you provide an example where an unregulated company that provided poor service suddenly improved dramatically in quality and/or price as a result of increased regulation?
The goal of society & government is to benefit the people, not large mega telecommunications companies.
The great populist lie. Who do you think runs the "large mega telecommunications companies"? I'm pretty sure they're run by people, not autonomous robots or computer programs. So let's restate what you're saying a bit more accurately: The goal of society and government is to benefit certain people to the detriment of other people, based on who is part of the largest group and hence has the most votes.
Your vision of the role of government sounds like mob rule to me.
And your solution to Comcast being crap is... to legislate them into not being crap? That'll totally work.
Comcast has already throttled and otherwise abused the bandwidth of their users. They have done exactly the kind of bullshit that net neutrality legislation is meant to prevent.
So you think that if you agree when you sign up that you won't use more than a certain amount of bandwidth, and you end up using more than that, Comcast should just have to suck it up? I'm glad I'm not doing business with you.
A free market is a market without economic intervention and regulation by government except to enforce ownership ("property rights") and contracts....
A free market does not require the existence of competition...
Your understanding of economics is flawed. There is nothing about a monopoly that is per se incompatible with a free market. And again, why is there an urgent need for a regulatory solution to a theoretical problem that, at present, doesn't exist?
De-facto net neutrality has worked well enough for everyone up until now. Let's legislate and make sure it stays that way.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And whatever you do, for God's sake don't let the government anywhere near it! If the hypothetical problems that everyone is concerned about emerge, there's always the option to legislate later. But what makes you so certain the free market won't sort things out, when by your own admission it has so far done just that?
Can a person who was convicted and sentenced to jail for a sex-related crime before the law was passed take any action to prevent themselves from being there when the law comes into effect? No they can't - whether they meet criteria (1), and therefore can be punished under this new law, is entirely determined by a combination of the State's decisions and their actions before this law was passed.
We weren't talking about when the law was passed, which is sort of the problem. The claim was that this was an ex post facto law without even considering when it was passed. In other words, that any application of this law at any time would be a violation of the ex post facto clause, even if it had already been on the books at the time of the original conviction. My response was that this showed a lack of understanding of the meaning of "ex post facto".
They are, in practice, clearly being punished under this law for criminal acts that occurred before this law was passed and before they could possibly know they'd receive such a punishment for doing so. That's a blatant violation of the ex post facto clause - your argument otherwise is just sophistry.
Again, this is a completely different argument. I gather that you grant that this law would be unambiguously not in violation of the ex post facto clause assuming it had been on the books at the time of the criminal act. However, even if it had not been, and were only passed during the prison sentence, it would still not be in violation. Whether or not you can prevent yourself from being covered by a new law going forward has nothing to do with whether it is an ex post facto law or not. I reiterate that it is only a violation of the ex post facto clause if it specifically enhances the punishment for a crime that has already been committed. Since this is a civil law, and hence requires a separate civil action and the finding of a judge, it is not covered. The issue of ex post facto doesn't even come up.
The law could have been passed even after conviction and sentencing and it would still be applicable. This is because to be a violation of the ex post facto clause, it must specifically criminalize or increase the punishment for an act committed prior to the passage of the law. So, for example, registration requirements for previously convicted sex offenders have been specifically held NOT to be violations of the ex post facto clause, because they don't provide for any punishment. Likewise, this law doesn't provide for further punishment under the legal meaning of the term. It only states that if you are 1) currently in federal custody for a sex offense, and 2) can be shown to a judge's satisfaction to be dangerous, you can be held until you are no longer considered dangerous. The key element here is that it requires an entirely new civil action and the subsequent finding of a judge. That is what, under the law as it is generally understood, prevents it from being a violation of the ex post facto clause.
Read this slowly: Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.
Exactly. And that has nothing to do with what you're talking about. Under your absurd interpretation, "three strikes" laws would be considered ex post facto, because they enhance the sentence for the third strike based solely on prior acts.
That's ex post facto. This portion of the definition has NOTHING to do with when the law was passed; it has to do with what the laws effect upon the punished person(s) will be.
From Wikipedia: An ex post facto law (from the Latin for "from after the action") or retroactive law, is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions committed or relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law. (emphasis added)
By definition, an "ex post facto" law can only apply to crimes committed prior to the enactment of the law. If the law is on the books when the crime is committed, it absolutely cannot be considered ex post facto.
But this is still irrelevant to the point. Let me break this down for you a bit more simply. If Congress were to pass a law saying that everyone who owns a gun must register it within ten days, and prescribes criminal penalties for failure to do so, would that be an ex post facto law? No, because meeting the conditions of the law--1) having a gun and 2) not registering it--is a discrete set of events, all of which occur simultaneously AFTER the passage of the law (the fact that the gun was purchased prior to the registration requirement is irrelevant, because the law doesn't reference "buying" a gun, but rather "owning" one). If the law instead said anybody who owned a gun within the last ten years, and did not register it within ten days of receiving it has committed a crime, that WOULD be an ex post facto law and would be unconstitutional.
Similarly, if Congress passed a law saying that all sex offenders who were previously convicted automatically have their sentences extended, that would be an ex post facto increase in punishment and prohibited. That is not what is happening here. The law simply says that any person who meets the conditions, namely that 1) the person is currently in federal custody for a sex related crime and 2) is believed to be "dangerous" if released, can be held indefinitely on the finding of a judge that those conditions are both true, based on an entirely new civil action. So being in custody for a sex-related crime is merely one of two necessary elements that, when combined, trigger an action under another, separate law. The punishment for the original crime is specifically not increased. But even if it were, it would STILL not be an ex post facto law, unless the act authorizing the sentence increase had not been passed when the crime was committed. If it had already been passed at that time, it's fair game. The ONLY time it can be invalid under the ex post facto clause is if the law enhancing the sentence had not yet been passed at the time of the commission of the crime.
You could make the argument that it violates due process to hold people in custody indefinitely based on a civil action. You could also argue that the potential for indefinite custody represents cruel and unusual punishment. But claiming it's an ex post facto law makes about as much sense as invoking the Third Amendment in this instance. It just shows you don't know what you're talking about.
Close. It's based upon what it DOES say, but not what it is agreed to mean by the legal community, who are permeated with, and governed by, traitors and high criminals. ... So don't expect me to be convinced I have gotten the constitution wrong. I know it very well, as well as its history and a good deal of the history of the people who wrote it, and y
Slashdot Mirror
You don't understand economics, do you?
If the gas was cheap, many would buy it. So they would have gas.
If the supply is low and the demand is high, as it is in an emergency, the price increases as demand outstrips supply. If you make the gas artificially cheap, the demand will increase to a level where it can't be met, so most people won't have gas.
You have freedom of speech, we have freedom from harassment.
You mean restriction against harassment. A freedom "from" something is not really a liberty. Recasting a restriction as a "freedom" is just statist doublespeak.
You certainly raise a good point that it's a relatively new technology and so the long term effects are somewhat unknown. However, there's currently no particular reason to think that it's not safe, even in theory. There is always the potential for some unknown and unforeseen factor to lie lurking in wait, but that's true for any new technology. The resistance to GM technology seems to mostly be based on fear of the unknown, combined with a lack of understanding of—and perhaps even a willful refusal to understand—the scientific principles behind the process.
In other words, your attempts to create a sort of Newspeak that redefines your terms to suit your argument having been exposed, you now attempt to redefine my terms to suit your argument.
Unless you want to argue that e. coli can crossbreed with wheat, there are genes that are introduced in GMO food that cannot come from cross-breeding.
You sound like the religious fanatics who claim that evolution couldn't possibly be true, because you can't explain how certain traits came up in some organisms and not others. Well, not only can I explain how it happened, I can generally explain why it happened. And knowing the why and the how, I can attempt to provide the same selection pressure on other organisms to produce the same result. Do you believe that it's impossible for traits that show up in one organism to ever show up in another? I assume you don't. Do you believe it's impossible to coerce a genetic trait into existence via selective cultivation and environmental pressure? Again, if you know anything about how bacteria evolve immunity to antibiotics, you know that's not true. Do you think it's impossible to transfer a desirable trait into a genetic line solely via selective cultivation and cross-breeding? If you know anything about botany, you know that you can indeed do so. So what makes you think you can't coerce a trait that exists in one organism into showing up in another via strictly non GM means? You obviously can do so, but it might take a very long time or a lot of luck. Genetic modifications just takes the random chance out of it, and allows you to skip the laborious and time-consuming process of doing things the traditional way. There's nothing magical about it.
My point is that, from a strict scientific perspective, there isn't really any difference between genetic modification and selective cultivation. Genetic modification is simply a way of speeding up a process that historically took centuries or even millennia to accomplish with less advanced technology.
Anyway, I've been around this site long enough to know that unpopular points of view are regularly modded down as “trolls”. Most people here, ultimately, aren't really qualified to moderate because they can't tell an actual troll from somebody who simply has a differing viewpoint. Luckily, in the fifteen years or so that I've been here I've racked up enough karma that I don't really give a damn about moderators with an agenda to push. :)
The problem is that everyone who talks about the magic of the free market is talking about a perfect market.
Now who's arguing semantics? Sorry, but you can't just move the goalposts by redefining terms as you see fit. I know of nobody who believes that the term “free market” means anything other than a market free from government regulation.
Yes, GMO at its most benign is nothing but cutting short a few generations of selective breeding. However, just like I don't need the exact breakdown of every atom in the food I buy, so I don't need a breakdown of every gene in the food I buy. It's sufficient to list out the genes that were artificially inserted and that make up the patent for the food (I'm sure you know that one of the drivers behind GMO food is because it allows for patenting food, right?).
Is your argument about health concerns or patent concerns? Because it again seems like you're trying to shift the goalposts here. Your original concern seemed to be about wanting to know if the banana was a special “glow-in-the-dark” kind, with no mention of patents. If your concern is really about the patent issues, then fine, that's your prerogative. But while you've admitted that genetic modification is nothing more than a shortcut to cross-breeding, you still haven't said what's so special about genes added using this technique that makes them somehow more relevant than other kinds of genes.
You might want to also look into "false dichotomy", "relevance in decision making" and "silence is golden."
If you had a point here, I'm not sure what it is. Either you can claim some legitimate scientific reason why genes inserted via genetic modification are different from genes inserted by cross-breeding (which you can't, because they aren't actually any different), or you have no point whatsoever.
Yes, he does. A perfect market, by definition, must be a free market, and free markets operate more efficiently with better information. You cannot logically separate the concepts into two different things... so it is YOU who are making the straw-man argument.
The claim was that perfect access to information was a cornerstone requirement of a free market. It is not. A perfect market may be a form of free market that requires perfect access to information, but that doesn't mean that a free market requires it. Logic 101 here. If every A is a kind of B, and every A has C, does every B have C? Not necessarily. If every perfect market is a free market, and every perfect market requires perfect information, does every free market require perfect information? Not necessarily. See how that works?
Again, it is YOU who do not know what you are talking about. There are EASILY identifiable differences in many GMO foods. No amount of cross-breeding on earth will insert genes from already-highly modified E. Coli into crops ("roundup-ready" corn) or otherwise cross plants and animals in such a manner. Or dissimilar animals, like jellyfish with mammals.
You are mistaken. Genes are genes. They neither know nor care which organism a specific genetic sequence arose in. Essentially any genetic sequence can be achieved in any organism given enough generations for it to arise and careful cross-breeding to isolate it. The fact that a specific mutation has arisen in one type of organism through luck of the draw shouldn't preclude us from reaping the benefits of it in others. There's no scientific rationale for the position that it should, except that it “sounds scary” to people who don't understand as much about how the science of genetics works as they think they do.
Yes, it can. First you just have to wait around a few thousand generations for the same gene to surface in the host plant. There's no reason why it couldn't or wouldn't, if you believe in the theory of evolution. Then you isolate that gene in the host plant by selective cross-breeding. It's a very slow, labor intensive process that can take many years to be successful, but there's no reason why it couldn't work. It's precisely what we've been doing for millennia. Genetic modification simply allows to reap the benefits of that labor at a much accelerated pace.
I find it interesting that one of the cornerstone requirements for a working free market - perfect access to full information - is being opposed by entities praising the free market at every turn.
You don't know what you're talking about. Perfect access to information is a condition of a perfect market, not a free market. The only condition for a free market is a lack of government regulations. Free markets do not require perfect access to anything, either as a condition to exist or in order to function properly. Your entire argument is a strawman.
It's that when I buy a banana, I want to know that this isn't a regular Chiquita banana, but the glow-in-the-dark version that is designed to keep nocturnal monkeys from eating it. In other words, I want to know what the product is that I'm buying. This bill would help me with that.
You're under the mistaken impression that there's some identifiable difference between GMO and non-GMO foods, that couldn't be achieved through natural cross-breeding techniques that have been used for thousands of years. Genetic modification just speeds up the process. Do you expect the entire genome of any fruit you buy to be mapped out for you before you decide whether or not to purchase it? If not, then your position is invalid, because just knowing that a food is “genetically modified” tells you absolutely nothing about what's actually in that food.
That's silly. So-called “genetic modification” is no different from cross-breeding that has been going on since the dawn of agriculture. Would you require a label for food that's grown using a tractor, or a computer controlled irrigation system, or some other technology that didn't exist a couple hundred years ago? What's special about this, other than that ignorant technophobes are freaked out by this particular thing for no good reason?
Read this and weep. NOBODY has the ability to just move off of nuclear power. Or any other power source for that matter. There is no such thing as "alternative energy". Global power demand is constantly increasing, even faster than population growth (in fact, as energy use increases, population tends to grow more slowly or even decline). We're going to need every watt of power we can get in the not too distant future, from nuclear sources or otherwise. This is a very foolish act on the part of Germany, that will only end up screwing them down the line as energy costs increase dramatically within 50 years, and their economy struggles to keep up. But by then, it will be too late. If Germany started building nuclear plants NOW, and continued building them at a rate that is practically impossible to manage, there's a CHANCE their economy might not end up collapsing completely within half a century.
Mark my words. People will look back on this as the beginning of the end for Germany.
The Slashdot post is incorrect, according to the article. The actual throughput is about 4GB/s.
At least in the 35mm film days, a point and shoot could equal an SLR using the same film stock
Not exactly. The primary reason people would pay big bucks for the SLR camera is because of the difference in lens selection and quality. Other than artistic skill, there's no single component that is going to make a bigger difference to the look of the photograph. All other things being roughly equal, a $1,000 lens on an SLR camera is going to be capable of producing a better photograph than a $99 point and shoot, from a technical perspective at least. There are some photographs that you can get with an SLR that you'll never be able to get with a point and shoot. High speed action, or extremely low/high depth of field shots, for example.
an artist using a point and shoot could take a better picture than some dumb rich guy with a thousand bucks of SLR
This is absolutely true. Still is, even with digital.
Sadly there doesn't seem to be a huge market for small, high quality compacts.
Sure there is. In fact, that's probably the largest market segment for digital cameras. Quality is getting better all the time, even as camera sizes are shrinking. Heck, they're starting to stick cameras in phones that rival the high end consumer digital cameras of only a few years ago.
O( n / log(P) ) not so much.
That algorithm does particularly poorly on just one processor. In fact, if it ran successfully the universe would implode.
I think it could be done with no more than two. The technology behind the iPod touchscreen is capable of recognizing the shape and size of a touch point. So you should be able to determine the type of piece with a single point, and you'd just need another point for orientation. I think only oval shapes can be recognized, but if asymmetrical shapes are possible (or if you had pieces that were symmetrical and limited the forward direction to a 180 degree arc), you could do it with only one.
But if you had access to the low level touchscreen interface, it may not even be a problem. I believe the iPod filters out points below a certain size threshold as random noise. But if you know that you're looking for certain patterns, you could separate these from the noise yourself and there would theoretically be no limit to the number of recognizable shapes.
Also, they're having a conference for criminals down at the local police station. Real big conference, trust me. I bet there'll be booth babes.
The presence of competition is not a necessary condition for a "free market". This is not open for debate--this is a simple matter of the definition of the term. What you might be thinking of is a "perfect market", which is a theoretical concept in economics that is not the same thing as a "free market". Go read up about it on Wikipedia and you'll see what I mean.
The goal of government and society is to benefit most people most of the time, to the detriment of the few individuals who violate the social contract -- in this case, those who have enriched themselves massively at the expense of everyone else, using ethics which are questionable at best.
So you want to legislate morality. We must all believe in your ethics, and anyone who doesn't follow your ethical code must be punished, and those who do should benefit. Funny how similar the views of the right-wingers and left-wingers are when you reduce them to their cores.
You generally believe the purpose of the government is to benefit people you like at the expense of people you don't like. You can qualify it however you want, but there is nothing noble about forcibly taking from those who have what you want, simply because they're not part of your favored group. If you wanted to say that the purpose of government is to prevent people from unjustly enriching themselves to the detriment of others, then perhaps we could agree. Then it would just be a matter of determining what is "just". But you seem to believe that some people are intrinsically entitled be enriched at the expense of others who intrinsically deserve to be punished, and are willing to use government powers to forcibly do so--after all, government powers derive entirely from the fact that the government has a monopoly on force.
The government should no more be benefitting the CEO of the company than the janitor. Personally, I don't believe forcing others to benefit you against their will is right, no matter what sort of populist veneer you put on it.
How do you propose to do so? Perhaps pass laws saying that Comcast must do X or must not do Y? And do you expect to do this for every complaint people have, until they're no longer "crap"? And how do you enforce these laws? If they refuse or are unable to comply with your whims, do you simply revoke their license to operate? Or do you sanction them until you force them to comply? What about the increased operating costs involved in complying with your regulations (or paying the sanctions)? These costs would necessarily be passed on to the consumer. Would you then regulate the price they can charge?
Unless you believe resources are infinite, any of these regulations must necessarily reduce the quality of service for a given price, or increase the price to consumers. Alternatively, if the service provider is unwilling or unable to comply with the regulations, it would result in the cessation of service entirely. Can you provide an example where an unregulated company that provided poor service suddenly improved dramatically in quality and/or price as a result of increased regulation?
The goal of society & government is to benefit the people, not large mega telecommunications companies.
The great populist lie. Who do you think runs the "large mega telecommunications companies"? I'm pretty sure they're run by people, not autonomous robots or computer programs. So let's restate what you're saying a bit more accurately: The goal of society and government is to benefit certain people to the detriment of other people, based on who is part of the largest group and hence has the most votes.
Your vision of the role of government sounds like mob rule to me.
I realize Comcast is crap,
You don't see that as a problem?
And your solution to Comcast being crap is... to legislate them into not being crap? That'll totally work.
Comcast has already throttled and otherwise abused the bandwidth of their users. They have done exactly the kind of bullshit that net neutrality legislation is meant to prevent.
So you think that if you agree when you sign up that you won't use more than a certain amount of bandwidth, and you end up using more than that, Comcast should just have to suck it up? I'm glad I'm not doing business with you.
From Wikipedia:
A free market is a market without economic intervention and regulation by government except to enforce ownership ("property rights") and contracts....
A free market does not require the existence of competition...
Your understanding of economics is flawed. There is nothing about a monopoly that is per se incompatible with a free market. And again, why is there an urgent need for a regulatory solution to a theoretical problem that, at present, doesn't exist?
De-facto net neutrality has worked well enough for everyone up until now. Let's legislate and make sure it stays that way.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And whatever you do, for God's sake don't let the government anywhere near it! If the hypothetical problems that everyone is concerned about emerge, there's always the option to legislate later. But what makes you so certain the free market won't sort things out, when by your own admission it has so far done just that?
Can a person who was convicted and sentenced to jail for a sex-related crime before the law was passed take any action to prevent themselves from being there when the law comes into effect? No they can't - whether they meet criteria (1), and therefore can be punished under this new law, is entirely determined by a combination of the State's decisions and their actions before this law was passed.
We weren't talking about when the law was passed, which is sort of the problem. The claim was that this was an ex post facto law without even considering when it was passed. In other words, that any application of this law at any time would be a violation of the ex post facto clause, even if it had already been on the books at the time of the original conviction. My response was that this showed a lack of understanding of the meaning of "ex post facto".
They are, in practice, clearly being punished under this law for criminal acts that occurred before this law was passed and before they could possibly know they'd receive such a punishment for doing so. That's a blatant violation of the ex post facto clause - your argument otherwise is just sophistry.
Again, this is a completely different argument. I gather that you grant that this law would be unambiguously not in violation of the ex post facto clause assuming it had been on the books at the time of the criminal act. However, even if it had not been, and were only passed during the prison sentence, it would still not be in violation. Whether or not you can prevent yourself from being covered by a new law going forward has nothing to do with whether it is an ex post facto law or not. I reiterate that it is only a violation of the ex post facto clause if it specifically enhances the punishment for a crime that has already been committed. Since this is a civil law, and hence requires a separate civil action and the finding of a judge, it is not covered. The issue of ex post facto doesn't even come up.
The law could have been passed even after conviction and sentencing and it would still be applicable. This is because to be a violation of the ex post facto clause, it must specifically criminalize or increase the punishment for an act committed prior to the passage of the law. So, for example, registration requirements for previously convicted sex offenders have been specifically held NOT to be violations of the ex post facto clause, because they don't provide for any punishment. Likewise, this law doesn't provide for further punishment under the legal meaning of the term. It only states that if you are 1) currently in federal custody for a sex offense, and 2) can be shown to a judge's satisfaction to be dangerous, you can be held until you are no longer considered dangerous. The key element here is that it requires an entirely new civil action and the subsequent finding of a judge. That is what, under the law as it is generally understood, prevents it from being a violation of the ex post facto clause.
Read this slowly: Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.
Exactly. And that has nothing to do with what you're talking about. Under your absurd interpretation, "three strikes" laws would be considered ex post facto, because they enhance the sentence for the third strike based solely on prior acts.
That's ex post facto. This portion of the definition has NOTHING to do with when the law was passed; it has to do with what the laws effect upon the punished person(s) will be.
From Wikipedia: An ex post facto law (from the Latin for "from after the action") or retroactive law, is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions committed or relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law. (emphasis added)
By definition, an "ex post facto" law can only apply to crimes committed prior to the enactment of the law. If the law is on the books when the crime is committed, it absolutely cannot be considered ex post facto.
But this is still irrelevant to the point. Let me break this down for you a bit more simply. If Congress were to pass a law saying that everyone who owns a gun must register it within ten days, and prescribes criminal penalties for failure to do so, would that be an ex post facto law? No, because meeting the conditions of the law--1) having a gun and 2) not registering it--is a discrete set of events, all of which occur simultaneously AFTER the passage of the law (the fact that the gun was purchased prior to the registration requirement is irrelevant, because the law doesn't reference "buying" a gun, but rather "owning" one). If the law instead said anybody who owned a gun within the last ten years, and did not register it within ten days of receiving it has committed a crime, that WOULD be an ex post facto law and would be unconstitutional.
Similarly, if Congress passed a law saying that all sex offenders who were previously convicted automatically have their sentences extended, that would be an ex post facto increase in punishment and prohibited. That is not what is happening here. The law simply says that any person who meets the conditions, namely that 1) the person is currently in federal custody for a sex related crime and 2) is believed to be "dangerous" if released, can be held indefinitely on the finding of a judge that those conditions are both true, based on an entirely new civil action. So being in custody for a sex-related crime is merely one of two necessary elements that, when combined, trigger an action under another, separate law. The punishment for the original crime is specifically not increased. But even if it were, it would STILL not be an ex post facto law, unless the act authorizing the sentence increase had not been passed when the crime was committed. If it had already been passed at that time, it's fair game. The ONLY time it can be invalid under the ex post facto clause is if the law enhancing the sentence had not yet been passed at the time of the commission of the crime.
You could make the argument that it violates due process to hold people in custody indefinitely based on a civil action. You could also argue that the potential for indefinite custody represents cruel and unusual punishment. But claiming it's an ex post facto law makes about as much sense as invoking the Third Amendment in this instance. It just shows you don't know what you're talking about.
Close. It's based upon what it DOES say, but not what it is agreed to mean by the legal community, who are permeated with, and governed by, traitors and high criminals.
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So don't expect me to be convinced I have gotten the constitution wrong. I know it very well, as well as its history and a good deal of the history of the people who wrote it, and y