The discussion of Jose Padilla illustrates the blantant disregard the executive branch has for civil liberties and demonstrates that, yes, even in 2004 under the leadership of St. Bush, we still need strong government checks and balances. Jose Padilla demonstrates to the naive that we still cannot trust the government. Hence, we need to give extra scrutiny to provisions in the Patriot Act that expand the power of the executive branch.
Exactly. We're talking about dipshits who, on the one hand, think citizens have some sort right to trial by jury, but simultaneously insist that people who disclose classified information should be fired. You blew the lid off their contradictory and mutually untenable positions. In any case, the real answer is that no you don't have a right to trial AND the president's advisors can disclose whatever classified information he sees fit. In other words, the executive branch can do whatever the fuck it wants and everyone else can go fuck themselves. What is wrong with this? N-O-T-H-I-N-G
So, in 1980 when Reagan kicked off his general election presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia MI, the annual gathering that was famous for its diatribes by segregationist politicians and the site of the infamous 1964 'Mississippi Burning' murders of three civil rights activists, he was just advocating decentralization? When Reagan stood up and said "I believe in states' rights," he wasn't passing a coded message to American's who resented the Civil Rights Act? Do you honestly think Reagan was advocating decentralization a la G. K. Chesterton?
Oh boy, you tell 'em boss. You really givn' 'em hell. "You big bean-eatin double-standard-havin' goal-post-moving whiners."
Wheeeee-you, Take that ya big bean-eaters: CONSUMERS OF HIGH'N-PROTE'N, HIGH'N FIBER DIETS!
I bet that's the last time that thar be-yotchn' beyotch's is gonna mess with an eruditin' uniform-standard-haviningn' United-Nation'n-Peace-Keepin'-Mission'-exposin' non-whiner such as yourself.
Hmmmm... "aggregate expenditure" -- please explain this complicated term to me. Does "aggregate expenditure" refer to the practice of blatantly fabricating numbers to support one's feeble argument? Or is it a barely-concealed attempt to hide behind a simplistic technical term in lieu of arguments and supporting evidence? Does "aggregate expenditure" refer to a process that can transform an argument with demolished premises into one in which a point "is still made"?
a) the city doesn't pay the "cost-per-user", they pay the fixed rate of $1,800 a month. The cost-per-user is endogenous and irrelevant to determing total expenditure.
b) the article didn't say 20 people use it. The article said that it had about 27 users per day which over the course of 17 months could be as many as 14,000 people.
textbooks for $3? ballistic vests for 20$ you don't know what you're talking about. you're fudging numbers by a factor of ten or twenty. And if bullshit numbers are your best argument against
this "brand of socialism", then I suggest you reconsider your ideology.
"The cost of running the Wifi might have been one penny per citizen per year... but given that 100 or so people used the thing, the costs were much higher"
No, the cost was fixed at $1,800 a month. The cost doesn't rise when fewer people use the service.
The free market is self cleansing, it always will be. I would rather trust the free economy to remove bad institutions than a MONOPOLY government whcih continues to make bad ones.
a) the fact that companies cannot operate arbitrarily dirty for an arbitrarily long time does not mean that the "self cleansing" mechanism of our market is keeping commercial interests sufficiently clean such that regulations are unnecessary. Drunk Drivers are "self-cleansing" too, but we still need laws against DWI and their vigilant enforcement to protect our citizens.
b) You have this perception that the government is a monopoly. In America we have these things called elections. These elections cycle our elected officials and prevent politicians from exercising monopoly controls. This cleansing mechanism is at least as effective as our market's.
Several Airports offer free-as-in-beer wireless. Obviously taxpayers have to pay for the wireless but nobody gives a damn because the fee for public wireless is negligable compared to the benefit of having wireless while waiting for your flight and negligable compared to the cost of having to pay AT&T $5 just to check one's email. In many cases, public wifi is a fabulous idea. Orlando tried a limited public test and decided to pursue a public-private partnership model which I think is an economically sound model for an expansive, encompassing wifi network -- It certainly beats waiting for the free market fairy to come along and magically give everybody wifi.
Your visions of potholes and children without schoolbooks are ludicrous, especially given that $30,000 isn't enough to hire a band director, much less revamp the police squad.
A bunch of Government Beauracrats spent oodles of taxpayer dollars, and ran the project almost three times as long as promised, and the taxpayers basically got bupkis
They spent a mere $1,800 a month. This is a negligable expense for the city of Orlando amounting to one penny per metro area citizen per year, not "oodles of taxpayer dollars" and certainly a reasonable expense for an experimental project.
What happens when you let the "free market handle these situations"? Why don't you visit Sea-Tac airport where the "free" market offers travelers multiple choices for wireless access at rates as low as $5 per day -- 178,000 times the rate Orlando citizens paid for their wireless access.
Do you realize that nothing you are saying has significant correlation to what I'm writing? It's truly astounding that you've constructed an entirely fictious portrait of my opinions and then have proceeded to rail against "Fascist" "shithead" me.
I believe that corporations should be regulated. However, I oppose all regulations that do not safeguard the public interest.
When I examine a bill, I assess the bill on it's own merits. I don't take a poll to determine whether or not the bill is popular.
In this particular instance, I'm "attacking" the government for forcing upon its citizens unnecessary and thereby wasteful regulation. I don't know if this regulation is the result of popular demand or simply the demands of a few well-connected religious leaders. If the law is a bad law, then I won't support it. Notice that I'm not attacking the government for "listening" to the people; I'm criticizing it for making bad laws.
Do you feel that a government who pursues a popular idea, no matter how backward, impractical, or unconstitutional, deserves to be shielded from criticism? I guess you do since you said you believe we must "support the government" for acting in ways we believe are "wrong and stupid". Well, I guess that's why we disagree.
Utah's Mormon majority gets to write as much Mormonism into their body of laws as the US federal constitution allows and I get to write posts in Slashdot saying that Utah is pandering to their right-wing constituency.
Got it?
My major premise is that all laws that have no tangible benefits are superficial pandering. I also claim that this particular proposal has no tangible benefit. By syllogism, I conclude that this proposed law is superficial pandering.
If you think that one of my aforementioned claims is wrong, then say so. If you can't contradict my claims, then stop wasting my time. But you to stop need telling people that they have "no right" to disagree with a majority population of Utah.
I say that the proposed law has no tangible benefit. The only 'benefit' I can think of is that it will make make self-righteous right-wing zealots feel better. If you disagree then I bid you to name the tangible benefit you think this law has.
I support Utah's democracy. I have, for instance, no legal qualms with Utah's congress declaring Lime Jello as Utah's Official Snack Food even though this proclamation was nothing more than superficial pandering to Utah's Mormon base.
It is my opinion, however, that laws should be reserved for meaningful corrective and regulatory actions, not so that clerics can have their morals affirmed, however indirectly, in our government. And if you find that opinion "very disturbing", then please explain why.
I agree that the market has supplied this service for years. Concerned parents already have the option of subscribing to porn-conscious ISPs or installing NetNanny or other programs to control their children's access. Therefore the proposed law is entirely unnecessary and simply burdens legitimate commercial establishments with addition layers of bureacracy and government regulation. The only "benefit" of this legislation is appeasing Utah's right-wing constituency.
Note, Rowan v Post Office has almost nothing to do with the proposed law since ISPs aren't forcing porn on anybody.
a) People choose what they do on the internet
b) People choose whether or not to patronize a particular ISP.
A fitting analogy is not whether the federal government can stop people from shoving porn in your mailbox, but whether the state government could mandate that all video rental stores must offer family friendly censored versions of all videos.
I am not a lawyer and I won't conjecture as to whether such a regulation at the state-level would be constitutional. I do know, however, that such a law would be, in my opinion, a bad law.
"Would you date a girl that would likely require you to move into her 12x10 bedroom with cinderella sheets, n'sync posters, barbies on the shelves and her nutty parents across the hallway?"
Sure, anything to get me out of my parents basement.
You don't need "a computer automatically move a large weight around." All you need is to make sure the primary modes of vibration are critically dampened. This is a simple matter of good civil engineering.
Put the harddrives in a kilm. Boil off the magnetic media. Once the media has evaporated nobody will ever be able to recover the data. Watch out for toxic fumes.
This article is about abiogenesis NOT evolution. Evolution is about natural selection ultimately can cause species to change into different species over enough time. Abiogenesis is about how life can be created from non-life. While creationists frequently convolute these (and other) theories, scientists should adhere to more rigorous standards.
The damage being done by somebody sending out one hundred and forty million spam messages and somebody commiting a serious crime like rape are not easily comparable. How spams do you have to delete from your inbox before you say to yourself "I'd rather have been raped"? ten million? twenty million?
Nonetheless, I think it makes sense that the punishment for sending out massive amounts of spam exceeds the punishment for, say, possesion of drugs. I'm certainly not going to boo-hoo because some spammer, somebody who is causing direct and broad damage to our livelihood, gets a few extra years in the slammer, while somebody enjoying illicit substances in the privacy of his own home gets sent to jail for at least that long.
you can't create an atmosphere on the moon; at least not one like ours on Earth. The primary gasses we have on the Earth's atmosphere would, over time, all achieve escape velocity and fly away.
maybe in theory if you used heavy enough fluids...
Slashdot Mirror
The discussion of Jose Padilla illustrates the blantant disregard the executive branch has for civil liberties and demonstrates that, yes, even in 2004 under the leadership of St. Bush, we still need strong government checks and balances. Jose Padilla demonstrates to the naive that we still cannot trust the government. Hence, we need to give extra scrutiny to provisions in the Patriot Act that expand the power of the executive branch.
Exactly. We're talking about dipshits who, on the one hand, think citizens have some sort right to trial by jury, but simultaneously insist that people who disclose classified information should be fired. You blew the lid off their contradictory and mutually untenable positions. In any case, the real answer is that no you don't have a right to trial AND the president's advisors can disclose whatever classified information he sees fit. In other words, the executive branch can do whatever the fuck it wants and everyone else can go fuck themselves. What is wrong with this? N-O-T-H-I-N-G
So, in 1980 when Reagan kicked off his general election presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia MI, the annual gathering that was famous for its diatribes by segregationist politicians and the site of the infamous 1964 'Mississippi Burning' murders of three civil rights activists, he was just advocating decentralization? When Reagan stood up and said "I believe in states' rights," he wasn't passing a coded message to American's who resented the Civil Rights Act? Do you honestly think Reagan was advocating decentralization a la G. K. Chesterton?
This technology will finally give our leaders those layered overhead maps with the live information they need and will revolutionize city planning.
Wheeeee-you, Take that ya big bean-eaters: CONSUMERS OF HIGH'N-PROTE'N, HIGH'N FIBER DIETS!
I bet that's the last time that thar be-yotchn' beyotch's is gonna mess with an eruditin' uniform-standard-haviningn' United-Nation'n-Peace-Keepin'-Mission'-exposin' non-whiner such as yourself.
Holy Crap! Timothy McVeigh is posting to slashdot from beyond the grave!
Hmmmm ... "aggregate expenditure" -- please explain this complicated term to me. Does "aggregate expenditure" refer to the practice of blatantly fabricating numbers to support one's feeble argument? Or is it a barely-concealed attempt to hide behind a simplistic technical term in lieu of arguments and supporting evidence? Does "aggregate expenditure" refer to a process that can transform an argument with demolished premises into one in which a point "is still made"?
b) the article didn't say 20 people use it. The article said that it had about 27 users per day which over the course of 17 months could be as many as 14,000 people.
textbooks for $3? ballistic vests for 20$ you don't know what you're talking about. you're fudging numbers by a factor of ten or twenty. And if bullshit numbers are your best argument against this "brand of socialism", then I suggest you reconsider your ideology.
You are mistaken. The population of the Orlando metro area is 1,644,561, not 27.
b) You have this perception that the government is a monopoly. In America we have these things called elections. These elections cycle our elected officials and prevent politicians from exercising monopoly controls. This cleansing mechanism is at least as effective as our market's.
Your visions of potholes and children without schoolbooks are ludicrous, especially given that $30,000 isn't enough to hire a band director, much less revamp the police squad.
What happens when you let the "free market handle these situations"? Why don't you visit Sea-Tac airport where the "free" market offers travelers multiple choices for wireless access at rates as low as $5 per day -- 178,000 times the rate Orlando citizens paid for their wireless access.
I believe that corporations should be regulated. However, I oppose all regulations that do not safeguard the public interest.
When I examine a bill, I assess the bill on it's own merits. I don't take a poll to determine whether or not the bill is popular.
In this particular instance, I'm "attacking" the government for forcing upon its citizens unnecessary and thereby wasteful regulation. I don't know if this regulation is the result of popular demand or simply the demands of a few well-connected religious leaders. If the law is a bad law, then I won't support it. Notice that I'm not attacking the government for "listening" to the people; I'm criticizing it for making bad laws.
Do you feel that a government who pursues a popular idea, no matter how backward, impractical, or unconstitutional, deserves to be shielded from criticism? I guess you do since you said you believe we must "support the government" for acting in ways we believe are "wrong and stupid". Well, I guess that's why we disagree.
Enjoy your trip to Iraq.
Utah's Mormon majority gets to write as much Mormonism into their body of laws as the US federal constitution allows and I get to write posts in Slashdot saying that Utah is pandering to their right-wing constituency.
Got it?
My major premise is that all laws that have no tangible benefits are superficial pandering. I also claim that this particular proposal has no tangible benefit. By syllogism, I conclude that this proposed law is superficial pandering.
If you think that one of my aforementioned claims is wrong, then say so. If you can't contradict my claims, then stop wasting my time. But you to stop need telling people that they have "no right" to disagree with a majority population of Utah.
I support Utah's democracy. I have, for instance, no legal qualms with Utah's congress declaring Lime Jello as Utah's Official Snack Food even though this proclamation was nothing more than superficial pandering to Utah's Mormon base.
It is my opinion, however, that laws should be reserved for meaningful corrective and regulatory actions, not so that clerics can have their morals affirmed, however indirectly, in our government. And if you find that opinion "very disturbing", then please explain why.
Note, Rowan v Post Office has almost nothing to do with the proposed law since ISPs aren't forcing porn on anybody.
a) People choose what they do on the internet
b) People choose whether or not to patronize a particular ISP.
A fitting analogy is not whether the federal government can stop people from shoving porn in your mailbox, but whether the state government could mandate that all video rental stores must offer family friendly censored versions of all videos.
I am not a lawyer and I won't conjecture as to whether such a regulation at the state-level would be constitutional. I do know, however, that such a law would be, in my opinion, a bad law.
Sure, anything to get me out of my parents basement.
You don't need "a computer automatically move a large weight around." All you need is to make sure the primary modes of vibration are critically dampened. This is a simple matter of good civil engineering.
Can you provide quantitative justification for your claim? I am skeptical because I know Canada has a large rural population.
Put the harddrives in a kilm. Boil off the magnetic media. Once the media has evaporated nobody will ever be able to recover the data. Watch out for toxic fumes.
This article is about abiogenesis NOT evolution. Evolution is about natural selection ultimately can cause species to change into different species over enough time. Abiogenesis is about how life can be created from non-life. While creationists frequently convolute these (and other) theories, scientists should adhere to more rigorous standards.
Nonetheless, I think it makes sense that the punishment for sending out massive amounts of spam exceeds the punishment for, say, possesion of drugs. I'm certainly not going to boo-hoo because some spammer, somebody who is causing direct and broad damage to our livelihood, gets a few extra years in the slammer, while somebody enjoying illicit substances in the privacy of his own home gets sent to jail for at least that long.
you can't create an atmosphere on the moon; at least not one like ours on Earth. The primary gasses we have on the Earth's atmosphere would, over time, all achieve escape velocity and fly away. maybe in theory if you used heavy enough fluids...