Thats sort of funny. I've always viewed people who are unable to accept at least one or two things on faith as having a false sense of strength.
OK, I'll bite. Give me one example of something that you can take on faith that is actually proven to be an unambiguously good thing.
You sound pretty ignorant We are all ignorant about something, I suppose. It is a matter of perspective I guess.
If you want an eye opening experience, learn the basic principles of Mormonism, and do so in a scientific manner. Sorry, I just can't get past the HUGE gaping hole in logic of believing in a deity without proof.
I know I'll get marked as a troll for this, but that is not my intent, so please try to be open minded.:-)
When someone can prove to me why one god is any more real than any other god, I'll believe. Until that point in time, I regard religion as a silly obsession for the weak and stupid.
Religion absolutely requires strict autocratic control over the devout masses. Leaking out a behind the scenes handbook thins the wall between Shepard and the flock, and may allow the sheep to think out side their assigned position in life, thus weakening the control the church has over its followers.
Free thinking and free access to information corrupts belief in god because, "as you know, reality has a liberal bias." (Colbert.) There is no proof of god and there is no universal truth, any belief system that relies on such a fiction crumbles in the light of critical thinking and knowledge. This is why all religions have tried to censor knowledge, burn books, kill heretics, and instigate wars against non-believers.
The world has changed since C64s and the AppleII. The difference is DRM. C64s, CP/M, DOS, etc. were all "free" with regards to information on the systems. There were no documents that you couldn't read.
PS: Besides, you can use a computer to learn about things other than the computer itself, right?
Yes, but under Windows, you can bet that costs more.
The whole point of the OLPC is the idea that it only costs $X, not $X + $Y + $Z.... based on what you want to learn. Poor and developing countries do not have the money for continuing expenditures. Windows on the OLPC will add a for-profit toll booth to learning.
Instead of helping the educational system of these countries, Microsoft gets a way to suck even more money out of people who can ill afford it. The OLPC with windows is no gift.
At the risk of being flamebait, exactly how does learning require freedom? Children learn from their parents
This is an opinion of someone who I bet does not have children. Kids do learn from their parents, but not when parents are being autocratic, that creates rebellion.
Kids need freedom and an environment where curiosity is rewarded. Dictatorial commands almost always have the opposite effect, not to mention crying and temper tantrums.
As for them learning for the business world, PLEASE! Blocks, balls, and toy trains don't teach them business skills, they teach spacial relationships and provide an innate "feeling" for the physics of objects in the real world which is far more useful.
Lastly, teaching "skills" is not nearly as useful as teaching concepts. If you learn and understand the concepts, the skills come far easier. If you only learn the basic skills, you are less able to adapt to paradigm shifts.
Forget Sugar, yea its great and all, but the point of the OLPC is learning. Learning requires freedom.
Windows is not "free," and I don't mean price, and I mean freedom. Putting Windows on OLPC is nothing more than a marketing move by Microsoft. Not to help kids, but to ensure they become customers. Not giving them books, selling the subscriptions. Not teaching them to farm, but making them sharecroppers.
We as citizens have been lied too. We have been manipulated. We have been played like a cheap fiddle. I do not for one minute dispute that. The current administration is the worst, ever.
As for the military, I have never served, and dissuade my children for serving. The reason? Well, true evil lives in the whitehouse and there is no way I would have my children die for this idiocy.
That being said, there is a deal between warriors and leaders. The warriors will die for the leaders, and the leaders won't waste their lives for no reason. I believe the chicken hawks in power have broken that promise. The "military" leaders MUST take orders from the civilian government, that's the constitution, that's the foundation of the republic. It is admirable that the military has followed these idiots and done what their constitutional duties required of them in the face of such stupidity.
The men and woman in the military have died for the preservation of the nation, but make no mistake, not in the defense of it.
I hear a lot of people defending OOXML or oblivious as to why it is really a problem. Let me spell it in no uncertain terms.
Microsoft has illegally used its monopoly position to eliminate competition. This is a fact as found in a court of law.
One of the methods of illegally maintaining their monopoly has been the upgrade treadmill. With regards to MS Office document formats, it works like this: version 'N' of the office software can not read documents created by version 'O.' This forces users of version 'N' to upgrade to version 'O.' -- Profit for Microsoft.
3rd party ISVs are in a similar situation, once they finally figure out how to support the document version in version 'N,' they have to continue development to support vesion 'O.'
This means that 3rd party ISVs and users have a continuing problem maintaining their environment and interoperability without risking incompatibility or continually expending capital.
"Standards" are generally used to stop this exploitation and create a more level marketplace allowing innovation above the standardized foundation, eliminating the constant capital expenditure of keeping up.
The OOXML is a sham. It is nothing more than a continuation of Microsoft's monopoly defacto bullshit standard. OOXML is nothing more than a way to game the system and do nothing more than they already do. Upon release of a new MS office version, they submit their changes to ISO, and move on from there.
It gives users and ISVs no relief. It creates no usable standard. It does nothing to level the market place. It does nothing to help the consumer. It does nothing to help the industry.
they would probably read what RMS has to say doesn't actually mean that they would agree.
A court doesn't agree or disagree, it bases opinion on law. If I say the sky is bright green and you sign an agreement with me stating that for some compensation that you keep telling people you think it is green. It doesn't matter if the court thinks the sky is green or not. All that matters is whether or not you abide by the contract. If not, then you must refund some portion of the compensation TBD by the court.
If a court rules about what "derivative" it will use RMS' supporting documents to do so and they won't award any more rights, only fewer. Just like the term " separation of church and state" is not in the constitution, but in documents and letters which show Thomas Jefferson's intentions were a "wall of separation between church and state," when he authored the first amendment.
RMS's intent regarding what constitutes a derivative work doesn't really mean all that much in the event that a court disagrees.
This is not actually true in U.S. law. When contracts are interpreted by a court, the supporting documents and the "knowable" intent as obtained by supporting documents help the court interpret those parts for which there is a dispute. The court generally chooses the least restrictive interpretation.
Right, but it isn't clear (to me) that a person can view GPL code without giving up similar rights (because the GPL demands that derivatives be GPL licensed).
Then you haven't read the license or the supporting documents to it. Forgive me, but may I suggest that you read the GPL completely and opinions from RMS about what constitutes "derivative" work. Its pretty clear.
I'm not saying you, but most of the people who oppose the GPL fall into two categories: (1) The people who think they should have the right take what other people have done or (2) people who only hear what people think that the GPL says.
In a strict reading, the BSD license is just as restrictive as the GPL in some circumstances and certainly not as permissive as people tend to believe. The GPL is generally very liberal, the only areas where it is not is where ownership rights would be converted.
GPL *is* the best license in which to develop free software for all to use and benefit.
Hey, while I think the current administration is repugnant and creates military enemies out of greed, and regards government and the military as nothing but a means to a financial end, I have to say I still think the military fights for the nation, and sometimes, must follow a corrupt president to prevent constitutional destruction. Honor our troups and all. I agree with it. These guys do their duty regardless of the ahole in the whitehouse sending them heaven knows where to fight for oil.
That being said, China, Iran, etc. have nothing on patriotic americans. Americans will do what they think is right and good for the country when ever asked to do so. The current problems with the U.S.A. are about what "right and good" are, not about whether or not to do it.
We don't need a botnet. Just tell america why it "right and good" to do something, put proper protections and limitations in it to ensure that the wrong people don't exploit your patriotism and it will happen.
I know that is naive, but part of me still believes that America has a noble streak that lately has been obscured by corporate greed.
I'm sorry, but I'm a "Free Software" with "Free" meaning "Freedom" advocate. The "Open Source" advocates like ESR are idiots. "Open Source" is a trap. Just ask anyone about the IBM BIOS and "contamination," the tricks phoenix had to play to take an API set embodied in published source code (IBMs BIOS in the tech manual) and create an independent implementation of it.
Having access to the source is "open" by any use of the english language, so Microsoft is correct when they say their "shared source" license is "open source," because the source is open for inspection, but that doesn't mean you are free to do anything with it.
In fact, you are probably less free over all because if you sign the requisite EULAs to gain access, any knowledge you acquire from the source is tainted and you may find yourself a copyright infringer simply because you viewed the "shared source" and had the audacity to write code elsewhere that may have had similar applications. Which is, of course common, because people who have expertise in one area tend to be more valuable continuing.
The "open source" movement without an expressed freedom to learn is a trap. ESR and their ilk are either too stupid to realize this or have an ulterior motive. Access to the source does not make better programs, freedom and collaboration does.
Traditionally the monopoly has made some new API and just made it something you have to install. The old VB runtimes. The.net runtime. The whatever runtime/library/something-or-other.
They can still make up a new api every couple of years and get that running on xp too. Make the latest Visual Studio generated apps use it and you've got a lot of developers using it to make little programs. And big programs.
There is a point I think you are missing, they still have to deal with the XP version of the core Windows API. I think it is very unlikely (I admit not impossible) for them to really replace that with something incompatible without also breaking applications. Adding an API DLL is no big deal if the underlying API which it calls do not change.
They can't risk a redistributable fiasco without alienating ISVs, which would make the situation even worse. If anew version of developer studio only produced exes for Vista or upgraded XP machines, developers would no longer upgrade their compilers for XP compatibility reasons. XP is the still target platform for Windows right now for ISVs.
I was thinking about something like this for a while, and this is a practical example, albeit, with different technology.
Did anyone see the movie, with Patrick Stewart, "Safe House?" To make a long story short, he has to enter a password every day to ensure an automated system does not activate. If he ever fails to enter that password, the system assumes he's dead and will let loose damaging blackmail that keeps him alive.
Anyway, a system like that would be very cool for home users. A small "safe house" program that gets run at startup that prompts for a password and gives you a number of tries. If the password is unsuccessful, the camera is activated, and web cam photos are sent to a known server when the network comes up, along with sound as well. Possibly key strokes and new documents web traffic and sites. All this happens quietly, in fact, there is no feedback as to the password being unsuccessful after the second try.
This information, along with the IP address, can be used to identify the thief and recover the property.
The problem with wine has always been the moving target that is Windows. That's how Microsoft keeps itself relevant. Using its monopoly position to keep everyone on the upgrade treadmill.
With Vista so terrible and, really, only new machines going vista and old machines staying as they are on XP, the XP level of the Win32 API has remained fairly stable for a good number of years. In fact, it may be unlikely that Microsoft will ever be able to unify the user base on a new version of the API again.
(And yes I know that there are still users of 3.1, W95,W98,W98SE, etc. but these are static installations that typically don't buy new software.)
Wine, moving forward, has a very good chance of capturing a usable market because ISVs are reluctant to abandon XP in any meaningful way.
Not really, perhaps the example was too subtle to be noticed, but getting only some portion of the facts, especially when the availability of the facts, not to mention the facts themselves, are intentionally being manipulated for an intended purpose is a form of propaganda.
The simple example of John McCain was used as an example of what can happen on a much much larger basis.
A) Censor parts of Google in China. B) Censor all of Google in China.
Which one of those is more evil?
Which is more evil:
Censoring part of the message:
"John McCain Kills Homeless man"
Or the Full Message:
"John McCain Kills Homeless man in self defense after being attacked."
There is no "partial censorship." It is either censored or not.Censorship is nothing more than a tool for propaganda. It is better to have them find reliable sources of information than to provided them with ones that are censored.
This is a very cool idea, and I don't think it will affect usability too much either. As long as the load balancer keeps tabs on system loading, via snmp or something, it can turn on/off machines based on need.
Assuming your system scales smoothly, i.e. gets proportionally slower as the system load starts to exceed processing capacity. For example, a process will always take 100ms as long as there is CPU time to spare, but once the CPU gets to 100% utilization, you have to start time slicing more processes, that 100ms starts to be 150ms. The load balancer can spin up a new server an start bring down the processing times.
This is an obvious solution to an obvious problem, but until now, we've just never had to examine it.
certainly in situations where abortion is just seen as a get out clause for not practicing 'safe' sex.
That is the fundamental (no pun intended) problem with the debate about abortion. When you make it a moralistic argument, i.e. the notion that someone *should* have done something based on *your* values, otherwise *they* would not be in this position, it becomes righteous to deny it.
Regardless, there are *reasons* that all but the most zealous fundamentalists could not deny would justify an abortion. Now that we've established a rational basis for "choice," we have to take the moralistic punishment motive out of the debate and focus on the benefit/cost to society of the policy.
You are still left with the conundrum of when 'life' actually begins though
Why? I accept the completely reasonable position that life starts with conception. It is not reasonable to think otherwise. If we found two cells on mars that were reproducing, we'd call that life.
To me, when life begins is less important a question than when it is a fetus "viable." IMHO, and there are a lot of people who will idealistically cling to rights, but I'd follow natures lead. If you're religious, you must accept that "god" created nature and set the rules. Correct? So, in the first trimester, what we'd call trivial trauma can cause a spontaneous abortion. I would allow full "choice." In the second trimester, that's much harder because we really are talking about a human, not a potential one. In the third trimester, hell babies have been born premature at that stage.
So, here are the rules; 1st trimester: full choice 2nd trimester: life of the mother, health of the baby 3rd trimester: Life of the mother I'm an atheist, so, I ask you as a religious person, would that be a compromise that people could live with?
probably shouldn't bite, but where exactly does life 'begin' then?
This is sort of what I was trying to say one post back. In the first trimester of human pregnancy any number of natural events will cause termination. High stress can do it! The flu as well. One more, the choice of the mother, isn't any more onerous, I don't think, and a lot less arbitrary or unfortunate then the natural ones. Especially when you consider the over all impact an additional life, that is not provided for or wanted, will have on a society.
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But liberals have no grasp on reality.
What reality is it that liberals can't grasp? The one when Saddam had WMD? The one where we would be greeted as liberators?
Thats sort of funny. I've always viewed people who are unable to accept at least one or two things on faith as having a false sense of strength.
OK, I'll bite. Give me one example of something that you can take on faith that is actually proven to be an unambiguously good thing.
You sound pretty ignorant
We are all ignorant about something, I suppose. It is a matter of perspective I guess.
If you want an eye opening experience, learn the basic principles of Mormonism, and do so in a scientific manner.
Sorry, I just can't get past the HUGE gaping hole in logic of believing in a deity without proof.
Logically, then... your own statement cannot be universally true
Perhaps not, but it certainly seems to be a historical fact. When was the last time you made an offering to Zeus?
There _is_ a universal truth
I have to quote Indiana Jones here. "'Fact' is not 'Truth,' if you are looking for 'truth' go to the philosophy department."
"Truth" is that what we believe, "Fact" is what's real and provable thus not requiring belief.
I know I'll get marked as a troll for this, but that is not my intent, so please try to be open minded. :-)
When someone can prove to me why one god is any more real than any other god, I'll believe. Until that point in time, I regard religion as a silly obsession for the weak and stupid.
Religion absolutely requires strict autocratic control over the devout masses. Leaking out a behind the scenes handbook thins the wall between Shepard and the flock, and may allow the sheep to think out side their assigned position in life, thus weakening the control the church has over its followers.
Free thinking and free access to information corrupts belief in god because, "as you know, reality has a liberal bias." (Colbert.) There is no proof of god and there is no universal truth, any belief system that relies on such a fiction crumbles in the light of critical thinking and knowledge. This is why all religions have tried to censor knowledge, burn books, kill heretics, and instigate wars against non-believers.
The world has changed since C64s and the AppleII. The difference is DRM. C64s, CP/M, DOS, etc. were all "free" with regards to information on the systems. There were no documents that you couldn't read.
.... based on what you want to learn. Poor and developing countries do not have the money for continuing expenditures. Windows on the OLPC will add a for-profit toll booth to learning.
PS: Besides, you can use a computer to learn about things other than the computer itself, right?
Yes, but under Windows, you can bet that costs more.
The whole point of the OLPC is the idea that it only costs $X, not $X + $Y + $Z
Instead of helping the educational system of these countries, Microsoft gets a way to suck even more money out of people who can ill afford it. The OLPC with windows is no gift.
At the risk of being flamebait, exactly how does learning require freedom? Children learn from their parents
This is an opinion of someone who I bet does not have children. Kids do learn from their parents, but not when parents are being autocratic, that creates rebellion.
Kids need freedom and an environment where curiosity is rewarded. Dictatorial commands almost always have the opposite effect, not to mention crying and temper tantrums.
As for them learning for the business world, PLEASE! Blocks, balls, and toy trains don't teach them business skills, they teach spacial relationships and provide an innate "feeling" for the physics of objects in the real world which is far more useful.
Lastly, teaching "skills" is not nearly as useful as teaching concepts. If you learn and understand the concepts, the skills come far easier. If you only learn the basic skills, you are less able to adapt to paradigm shifts.
Forget Sugar, yea its great and all, but the point of the OLPC is learning. Learning requires freedom.
Windows is not "free," and I don't mean price, and I mean freedom. Putting Windows on OLPC is nothing more than a marketing move by Microsoft. Not to help kids, but to ensure they become customers. Not giving them books, selling the subscriptions. Not teaching them to farm, but making them sharecroppers.
I'm responding because you have a real point.
We as citizens have been lied too. We have been manipulated. We have been played like a cheap fiddle. I do not for one minute dispute that. The current administration is the worst, ever.
As for the military, I have never served, and dissuade my children for serving. The reason? Well, true evil lives in the whitehouse and there is no way I would have my children die for this idiocy.
That being said, there is a deal between warriors and leaders. The warriors will die for the leaders, and the leaders won't waste their lives for no reason. I believe the chicken hawks in power have broken that promise. The "military" leaders MUST take orders from the civilian government, that's the constitution, that's the foundation of the republic. It is admirable that the military has followed these idiots and done what their constitutional duties required of them in the face of such stupidity.
The men and woman in the military have died for the preservation of the nation, but make no mistake, not in the defense of it.
I hear a lot of people defending OOXML or oblivious as to why it is really a problem. Let me spell it in no uncertain terms.
Microsoft has illegally used its monopoly position to eliminate competition. This is a fact as found in a court of law.
One of the methods of illegally maintaining their monopoly has been the upgrade treadmill. With regards to MS Office document formats, it works like this: version 'N' of the office software can not read documents created by version 'O.' This forces users of version 'N' to upgrade to version 'O.' -- Profit for Microsoft.
3rd party ISVs are in a similar situation, once they finally figure out how to support the document version in version 'N,' they have to continue development to support vesion 'O.'
This means that 3rd party ISVs and users have a continuing problem maintaining their environment and interoperability without risking incompatibility or continually expending capital.
"Standards" are generally used to stop this exploitation and create a more level marketplace allowing innovation above the standardized foundation, eliminating the constant capital expenditure of keeping up.
The OOXML is a sham. It is nothing more than a continuation of Microsoft's monopoly defacto bullshit standard. OOXML is nothing more than a way to game the system and do nothing more than they already do. Upon release of a new MS office version, they submit their changes to ISO, and move on from there.
It gives users and ISVs no relief. It creates no usable standard. It does nothing to level the market place. It does nothing to help the consumer. It does nothing to help the industry.
they would probably read what RMS has to say doesn't actually mean that they would agree.
A court doesn't agree or disagree, it bases opinion on law. If I say the sky is bright green and you sign an agreement with me stating that for some compensation that you keep telling people you think it is green. It doesn't matter if the court thinks the sky is green or not. All that matters is whether or not you abide by the contract. If not, then you must refund some portion of the compensation TBD by the court.
If a court rules about what "derivative" it will use RMS' supporting documents to do so and they won't award any more rights, only fewer. Just like the term " separation of church and state" is not in the constitution, but in documents and letters which show Thomas Jefferson's intentions were a "wall of separation between church and state," when he authored the first amendment.
RMS's intent regarding what constitutes a derivative work doesn't really mean all that much in the event that a court disagrees.
This is not actually true in U.S. law. When contracts are interpreted by a court, the supporting documents and the "knowable" intent as obtained by supporting documents help the court interpret those parts for which there is a dispute. The court generally chooses the least restrictive interpretation.
Right, but it isn't clear (to me) that a person can view GPL code without giving up similar rights (because the GPL demands that derivatives be GPL licensed).
Then you haven't read the license or the supporting documents to it. Forgive me, but may I suggest that you read the GPL completely and opinions from RMS about what constitutes "derivative" work. Its pretty clear.
I'm not saying you, but most of the people who oppose the GPL fall into two categories: (1) The people who think they should have the right take what other people have done or (2) people who only hear what people think that the GPL says.
In a strict reading, the BSD license is just as restrictive as the GPL in some circumstances and certainly not as permissive as people tend to believe. The GPL is generally very liberal, the only areas where it is not is where ownership rights would be converted.
GPL *is* the best license in which to develop free software for all to use and benefit.
Hey, while I think the current administration is repugnant and creates military enemies out of greed, and regards government and the military as nothing but a means to a financial end, I have to say I still think the military fights for the nation, and sometimes, must follow a corrupt president to prevent constitutional destruction. Honor our troups and all. I agree with it. These guys do their duty regardless of the ahole in the whitehouse sending them heaven knows where to fight for oil.
That being said, China, Iran, etc. have nothing on patriotic americans. Americans will do what they think is right and good for the country when ever asked to do so. The current problems with the U.S.A. are about what "right and good" are, not about whether or not to do it.
We don't need a botnet. Just tell america why it "right and good" to do something, put proper protections and limitations in it to ensure that the wrong people don't exploit your patriotism and it will happen.
I know that is naive, but part of me still believes that America has a noble streak that lately has been obscured by corporate greed.
Compartmentalization is just as much a problem when viewing GPL code. Viewing GPL code doesn't have any implications if you plan on releasing GPL code
Then there really is no problem.
Seriously, the "shared source" license is not generally public, you have to sign away certain rights to view it.
I'm sorry, but I'm a "Free Software" with "Free" meaning "Freedom" advocate. The "Open Source" advocates like ESR are idiots. "Open Source" is a trap. Just ask anyone about the IBM BIOS and "contamination," the tricks phoenix had to play to take an API set embodied in published source code (IBMs BIOS in the tech manual) and create an independent implementation of it.
Having access to the source is "open" by any use of the english language, so Microsoft is correct when they say their "shared source" license is "open source," because the source is open for inspection, but that doesn't mean you are free to do anything with it.
In fact, you are probably less free over all because if you sign the requisite EULAs to gain access, any knowledge you acquire from the source is tainted and you may find yourself a copyright infringer simply because you viewed the "shared source" and had the audacity to write code elsewhere that may have had similar applications. Which is, of course common, because people who have expertise in one area tend to be more valuable continuing.
The "open source" movement without an expressed freedom to learn is a trap. ESR and their ilk are either too stupid to realize this or have an ulterior motive. Access to the source does not make better programs, freedom and collaboration does.
Traditionally the monopoly has made some new API and just made it something you have to install. The old VB runtimes. The .net runtime. The whatever runtime/library/something-or-other.
They can still make up a new api every couple of years and get that running on xp too. Make the latest Visual Studio generated apps use it and you've got a lot of developers using it to make little programs. And big programs.
There is a point I think you are missing, they still have to deal with the XP version of the core Windows API. I think it is very unlikely (I admit not impossible) for them to really replace that with something incompatible without also breaking applications. Adding an API DLL is no big deal if the underlying API which it calls do not change.
They can't risk a redistributable fiasco without alienating ISVs, which would make the situation even worse. If anew version of developer studio only produced exes for Vista or upgraded XP machines, developers would no longer upgrade their compilers for XP compatibility reasons. XP is the still target platform for Windows right now for ISVs.
I was thinking about something like this for a while, and this is a practical example, albeit, with different technology.
Did anyone see the movie, with Patrick Stewart, "Safe House?" To make a long story short, he has to enter a password every day to ensure an automated system does not activate. If he ever fails to enter that password, the system assumes he's dead and will let loose damaging blackmail that keeps him alive.
Anyway, a system like that would be very cool for home users. A small "safe house" program that gets run at startup that prompts for a password and gives you a number of tries. If the password is unsuccessful, the camera is activated, and web cam photos are sent to a known server when the network comes up, along with sound as well. Possibly key strokes and new documents web traffic and sites. All this happens quietly, in fact, there is no feedback as to the password being unsuccessful after the second try.
This information, along with the IP address, can be used to identify the thief and recover the property.
The problem with wine has always been the moving target that is Windows. That's how Microsoft keeps itself relevant. Using its monopoly position to keep everyone on the upgrade treadmill.
With Vista so terrible and, really, only new machines going vista and old machines staying as they are on XP, the XP level of the Win32 API has remained fairly stable for a good number of years. In fact, it may be unlikely that Microsoft will ever be able to unify the user base on a new version of the API again.
(And yes I know that there are still users of 3.1, W95,W98,W98SE, etc. but these are static installations that typically don't buy new software.)
Wine, moving forward, has a very good chance of capturing a usable market because ISVs are reluctant to abandon XP in any meaningful way.
You're making a straw man
Not really, perhaps the example was too subtle to be noticed, but getting only some portion of the facts, especially when the availability of the facts, not to mention the facts themselves, are intentionally being manipulated for an intended purpose is a form of propaganda.
The simple example of John McCain was used as an example of what can happen on a much much larger basis.
A) Censor parts of Google in China.
B) Censor all of Google in China.
Which one of those is more evil?
Which is more evil:
Censoring part of the message:
"John McCain Kills Homeless man"
Or the Full Message:
"John McCain Kills Homeless man in self defense after being attacked."
There is no "partial censorship." It is either censored or not.Censorship is nothing more than a tool for propaganda. It is better to have them find reliable sources of information than to provided them with ones that are censored.
This is a very cool idea, and I don't think it will affect usability too much either. As long as the load balancer keeps tabs on system loading, via snmp or something, it can turn on/off machines based on need.
Assuming your system scales smoothly, i.e. gets proportionally slower as the system load starts to exceed processing capacity. For example, a process will always take 100ms as long as there is CPU time to spare, but once the CPU gets to 100% utilization, you have to start time slicing more processes, that 100ms starts to be 150ms. The load balancer can spin up a new server an start bring down the processing times.
This is an obvious solution to an obvious problem, but until now, we've just never had to examine it.
certainly in situations where abortion is just seen as a get out clause for not practicing 'safe' sex.
That is the fundamental (no pun intended) problem with the debate about abortion. When you make it a moralistic argument, i.e. the notion that someone *should* have done something based on *your* values, otherwise *they* would not be in this position, it becomes righteous to deny it.
Regardless, there are *reasons* that all but the most zealous fundamentalists could not deny would justify an abortion. Now that we've established a rational basis for "choice," we have to take the moralistic punishment motive out of the debate and focus on the benefit/cost to society of the policy.
You are still left with the conundrum of when 'life' actually begins though
Why? I accept the completely reasonable position that life starts with conception. It is not reasonable to think otherwise. If we found two cells on mars that were reproducing, we'd call that life.
To me, when life begins is less important a question than when it is a fetus "viable." IMHO, and there are a lot of people who will idealistically cling to rights, but I'd follow natures lead. If you're religious, you must accept that "god" created nature and set the rules. Correct? So, in the first trimester, what we'd call trivial trauma can cause a spontaneous abortion. I would allow full "choice." In the second trimester, that's much harder because we really are talking about a human, not a potential one. In the third trimester, hell babies have been born premature at that stage.
So, here are the rules;
1st trimester: full choice
2nd trimester: life of the mother, health of the baby
3rd trimester: Life of the mother
I'm an atheist, so, I ask you as a religious person, would that be a compromise that people could live with?
probably shouldn't bite, but where exactly does life 'begin' then?
This is sort of what I was trying to say one post back. In the first trimester of human pregnancy any number of natural events will cause termination. High stress can do it! The flu as well. One more, the choice of the mother, isn't any more onerous, I don't think, and a lot less arbitrary or unfortunate then the natural ones. Especially when you consider the over all impact an additional life, that is not provided for or wanted, will have on a society.