It only establishes protections for certain rights. Your rights exist with or without the Constitution (and hence they are "unalienable"). Protection just means that Government personnel cannot infringe those rights with impunity. If the protections are eroded -- by an overreaching executive branch, a complacent Congress, or a judicial branch that looks the other way -- then you still have those rights. But they will get trampled all over.
I don't think it's as simple as an algorithmic change. The RF modulation schemes (below the MAC layer) are different (QAM for downstream, and QPSK for upstream, if I'm not mistaken). I'm not an expert in the communications discipline, so I don't know the technical reason for the choice, but the two schemes will undoubtedly have different bandwidth efficiencies. I'd expect that the problem of having multiple low-power (relatively speaking) transmitters driving the same medium has something to do with the choice. And aggregating upstream bandwidths while maintaining QoS could also make increased upstream bandwidth harder to achieve.
Not saying it can't be done, it's a major change in infrastructure, though. I just don't go along with the conspiracy theorists on this one because I can see how there would be technical challenges.
It's also true that, for the majority of users the majority of the time, the demand is for downstream bandwidth (for each upload to YouTube, there may be dozens, hundreds, or thousands of reads from same).
"95% sure" doesn't mean "right 95% of the time". It means that his conviction of there not being a car eclipses his doubt by a 19-to-1 ratio. It's a measure of mental state, not of probabilities. My brother-in-law is 99% sure that playing the lottery frequently will make him rich one of these days.
...except the Civic is not more efficient (42 MPG, to the Prius 46 MPG, under the revised EPA testing). Apples and oranges, anyway. Civic is a compact car. Prius (the newer version, not the original) is a mid-sized car, and has more power that the Civic hybrid.
Not sure what "doesn't look like a hybrid" means, anyway. Is there a hybrid look?
Circular how? If society makes the determination, then the evaulation begins and ends with society. The reason many people see a problem with this, is that many societies will judge X to be good when X is, clearly (in some sense of the word "clearly"), bad. For example, let "society" == the old South, and X == slavery. Or let "society" == the Bush administration, and X == torture.
Is this a real problem? Yes, it is a real problem, because relativism itself is real. Saying morality is absolute does nothing to change the fact that morality is not absolute. Relativism is an observation on morality. It's not a solution to moral problems or an attempt to accommodate differences; it's an acknowledgement that those differences are real, and as such, is a precondition to dealing with those differences.
Absolutism is merely fantasy and is a poor choice for dealing with the real world.
Once you fall prey to the myth of "equal, but different", you no longer feel justified in the effort to migrate users from dysfunctional value systems.
That one cannot be a relativist without falling prey to such a myth, is itself a myth used by absolutists to justify their position.
And you have yourself stated a relative position by deciding that the good of society is a good thing.
As a relativist, it makes sense that I would take a relative position. But you're missing the point. "The good of society is a good thing" is not a relative position, and I did not take that position. "X is for the good of society" is a relative position, because it measures X against societal goals. But "The good of society is a good thing" measures "the good of society" against -- what???
(And yes, I can make a damned strong argument that it isn't, given that society is presently busy risking the survival of the species.)
A relativist statement if ever there was one!
Relativism doesn't work, nothing that is subjective is real
That's a non sequitur, because relativism isn't dependent on subjectivism (although they can coexist logically). But I also don't buy your premise that "nothing that is subjective is real". Everything that is subjective -- humor, sadness, and so on -- has measurable consequences in the real world (laughter, tears, etc.). Without subjectivity, a joke isn't funny; it's just a bunch of words.
Nonsense. I've asserted that reality is what reality is, and it doesn't give a damn whether, or how well, or in what way I perceive it.
I call double nonsense. Asserting a truism doesn't validate an argument, unless you are arguing for the truism, in which case you aren't really making an argument.
Relativism simply means that our values are to be judged by how well they serve society. Absolutism means that those values are an integral part of external reality (independent of observers/participants in that reality), and therefore requires that people serve the value system instead of the other way around. Reality is what reality is, but that in no way implies that values are objective.
Why is it censorship? Who is preventing anybody from saying what they will? It may be criticism, just as it is criticism when right-wingers use "politically correct" to attack those they disagree with, but criticism != censorship.
It's not an absolute power, as pointed out by James Madison: "If the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him."
to the immigration issue that would make more people happy than it would piss off. All the solutions that have been brought to the table so far either piss off the anti-immigration crowd or the pro-immigration crowd, usually both. Any solution is going to make some group of people unhappy.
So why not have state-issued green cards? The federal government need only be involved in naturalization and issuance of visas, and in deportation in the case of federal crimes. States could set their own quotas (even to zero if they desire) and issue provisional green cards to foreign applicants. The green card would be valid for employment only in the state of issue, and it would only remain valid as long as the holder continued to file state tax returns (or other documents proving employment, in the case of states with no income taxes). States could set other requirements as they see fit.
The idea of a one-size-fits-all federal solution to immigration just isn't going to fly in a country that includes states as different as Michigan, Iowa, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, and Alabama.
You want to assert simply that "a Prime Mover must exist". It's an arbitrary statement; a postulate. One could just as readily state that "a Prime Mover need not exist", or "a Prime Mover cannot exist" (the last is a restatement of the steady-state hypothesis in metaphysical terms). Any of these statements could form the basis for a consistent set of theorems (at least, I can't show logically that any of them necessarily leads to a contradiction).
What GP is pointing out, in a roundabout way, is that if you assert "X cannot exist without Y", then by definition X is not a Prime Mover. If you also assert "a Prime Mover exists", then you have to stop traversing this chain at some point and say that "Z is the Prime Mover". But perhaps Z is nothing more than the singularity that existed before (and I use that preposition loosely) the Big Bang. Where's the evidence that "Z cannot exist without Z'"?
I suppose we are expected to accept the converse of your premise, that closing the door on net neutrality will close the door on email taxes and censorship? Give me a break.
Slashdot Mirror
It only establishes protections for certain rights. Your rights exist with or without the Constitution (and hence they are "unalienable"). Protection just means that Government personnel cannot infringe those rights with impunity. If the protections are eroded -- by an overreaching executive branch, a complacent Congress, or a judicial branch that looks the other way -- then you still have those rights. But they will get trampled all over.
I don't think it's as simple as an algorithmic change. The RF modulation schemes (below the MAC layer) are different (QAM for downstream, and QPSK for upstream, if I'm not mistaken). I'm not an expert in the communications discipline, so I don't know the technical reason for the choice, but the two schemes will undoubtedly have different bandwidth efficiencies. I'd expect that the problem of having multiple low-power (relatively speaking) transmitters driving the same medium has something to do with the choice. And aggregating upstream bandwidths while maintaining QoS could also make increased upstream bandwidth harder to achieve.
Not saying it can't be done, it's a major change in infrastructure, though. I just don't go along with the conspiracy theorists on this one because I can see how there would be technical challenges.
It's also true that, for the majority of users the majority of the time, the demand is for downstream bandwidth (for each upload to YouTube, there may be dozens, hundreds, or thousands of reads from same).
If he was driving at the time, he probably said, "Shit! Where'd that truck come from!"
"95% sure" doesn't mean "right 95% of the time". It means that his conviction of there not being a car eclipses his doubt by a 19-to-1 ratio. It's a measure of mental state, not of probabilities. My brother-in-law is 99% sure that playing the lottery frequently will make him rich one of these days.
What, do you honestly think that they haul your trade-in directly to the crusher whenever you buy a new car?
Maybe he's seen National Lampoon's Vacation one too many times.
You left out: 3. improved aerodynamics
...except the Civic is not more efficient (42 MPG, to the Prius 46 MPG, under the revised EPA testing). Apples and oranges, anyway. Civic is a compact car. Prius (the newer version, not the original) is a mid-sized car, and has more power that the Civic hybrid. Not sure what "doesn't look like a hybrid" means, anyway. Is there a hybrid look?
Most early Prius owners just ditched their relatively new cars to get a Prius.
Citation, please?
Nothing facilitates debate like idle speculation.
Well, he certainly seems unencumbered by silly things like the Constitution.
I'm not sure. Bill O'Reilly claims that Daily Kos was calling for overthrow, but I can't find the post so I'm in the dark on the actual plans.
Circular how? If society makes the determination, then the evaulation begins and ends with society. The reason many people see a problem with this, is that many societies will judge X to be good when X is, clearly (in some sense of the word "clearly"), bad. For example, let "society" == the old South, and X == slavery. Or let "society" == the Bush administration, and X == torture.
Is this a real problem? Yes, it is a real problem, because relativism itself is real. Saying morality is absolute does nothing to change the fact that morality is not absolute. Relativism is an observation on morality. It's not a solution to moral problems or an attempt to accommodate differences; it's an acknowledgement that those differences are real, and as such, is a precondition to dealing with those differences.
Absolutism is merely fantasy and is a poor choice for dealing with the real world.
Once you fall prey to the myth of "equal, but different", you no longer feel justified in the effort to migrate users from dysfunctional value systems.
That one cannot be a relativist without falling prey to such a myth, is itself a myth used by absolutists to justify their position.
And you have yourself stated a relative position by deciding that the good of society is a good thing.
As a relativist, it makes sense that I would take a relative position. But you're missing the point. "The good of society is a good thing" is not a relative position, and I did not take that position. "X is for the good of society" is a relative position, because it measures X against societal goals. But "The good of society is a good thing" measures "the good of society" against -- what???
(And yes, I can make a damned strong argument that it isn't, given that society is presently busy risking the survival of the species.)
A relativist statement if ever there was one!
Relativism doesn't work, nothing that is subjective is real
That's a non sequitur, because relativism isn't dependent on subjectivism (although they can coexist logically). But I also don't buy your premise that "nothing that is subjective is real". Everything that is subjective -- humor, sadness, and so on -- has measurable consequences in the real world (laughter, tears, etc.). Without subjectivity, a joke isn't funny; it's just a bunch of words.
Nonsense. I've asserted that reality is what reality is, and it doesn't give a damn whether, or how well, or in what way I perceive it.
I call double nonsense. Asserting a truism doesn't validate an argument, unless you are arguing for the truism, in which case you aren't really making an argument.
Relativism simply means that our values are to be judged by how well they serve society. Absolutism means that those values are an integral part of external reality (independent of observers/participants in that reality), and therefore requires that people serve the value system instead of the other way around. Reality is what reality is, but that in no way implies that values are objective.
Infinitely improbable, you might say.
For the record, I eschew both phrases.
It's always been a code for "Those freakin' liberals are going to hate to hear this, but..."
And "politically correct" is code for "Only a liberal would think this".
Ironically, those who coined the terms were imposing their own notions of political correctness.
No, dictionaries are archaic.
It's not an absolute power, as pointed out by James Madison: "If the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him."
That would be insecurity through obscurity.
to the immigration issue that would make more people happy than it would piss off. All the solutions that have been brought to the table so far either piss off the anti-immigration crowd or the pro-immigration crowd, usually both. Any solution is going to make some group of people unhappy.
So why not have state-issued green cards? The federal government need only be involved in naturalization and issuance of visas, and in deportation in the case of federal crimes. States could set their own quotas (even to zero if they desire) and issue provisional green cards to foreign applicants. The green card would be valid for employment only in the state of issue, and it would only remain valid as long as the holder continued to file state tax returns (or other documents proving employment, in the case of states with no income taxes). States could set other requirements as they see fit.
The idea of a one-size-fits-all federal solution to immigration just isn't going to fly in a country that includes states as different as Michigan, Iowa, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, and Alabama.
OK, I'll get off the soapbox now.
The last item in quotes is hard to read because of the single quote followed by double quotes; read it as "Z cannot exist without Z-prime".
What GP is pointing out, in a roundabout way, is that if you assert "X cannot exist without Y", then by definition X is not a Prime Mover. If you also assert "a Prime Mover exists", then you have to stop traversing this chain at some point and say that "Z is the Prime Mover". But perhaps Z is nothing more than the singularity that existed before (and I use that preposition loosely) the Big Bang. Where's the evidence that "Z cannot exist without Z'"?
Ah, stupid design!
I suppose we are expected to accept the converse of your premise, that closing the door on net neutrality will close the door on email taxes and censorship? Give me a break.
or at least, they won't be until we get rid of that pesky net neutrality thing.