News is NOT supposed to be neutral. It is supposed to be objective. Most news outlets today strive to be neutral, which leads to shallow, insipid reporting, in which no outlet has the balls to report anything as fact. Instead they simply report whatever each side of an issue says.
"The admistration said today that flatulence is caused by an evil faerie named Mortimer, however some critics disagree!"
Objective means fact-checking, and reporting what is true. Neutral means echoing every opinion and statement that is fed to you, regardless of the source, in order to treat all standpoints and arguments as equally valid. Neutral is a horrible thing for news to be.
That being said, slashdot can't be called an prime example of neutrality or objectivity.
"Perhaps you have changed your lifestyle to fit your no cash utopia, but to suggest that others do likewise because they had the misfortune to be born blind or to have lost their eyesight is plain wrong."
I agree that we ought to have more easily distinguishable currency, both for the blind and for other practical reasons, but this is a pretty poor argument. These days, doing without cash is a perfectly viable option. As you pointed out, there are plenty of situations where it isn't the MOST preferable option, but it is a perfectly good one. It is not "just plain wrong" to suggest that a small percentage of the population might choose an alternative that works better for their circumstances.
In essence, you are saying that it isn't enough to make sure that the handicapped are accomodated -- that we should instead go to great expense to change our infrastructure so that the best option for you is also the best option for them. Fact is, their circumstances are different, and there is a perfectly good alternative for them, there is nothing wrong with suggesting that the expense to the country of changing our currency outweighs the convenience benefit it would provide to a small minority of the population.
You make it sound as though expecting a handicap to change someones lifestyle is a nazi attitude or something.
We expect the blind to use a cane or a seeing eye-dog when walking around town. We don't remove all the curbs, bumps, fire hydrants, and mailboxes so that they won't have to. We publish books in braille so that they can be read by the blind, but we don't mandate that every book you open have printing on one line and braille right below it so that they won't have to order the braille edition. We build "doorbells" that come with flashing lights for the deaf, but we don't insist that all doorbells be installed with one so that they won't have to go out of there way to get the special kind. We put ramps and elevators in our buildings so that people in a wheelchair can get up and down, but we don't replace every staircase.
If we decide it's "wrong" to expect the differently abled to choose different options, what do you have in mind for automobiles? How do you think we should change them so that nobody has to adopt mass-transit just because they had the misfortune to be born blind? How do you think we should change the radio so that the deaf can listen too?
In the particular case of our currency, I happen to agree with you in thinking that changing it is worthwhile. It isn't that difficult or costly, and there are a lot of good reasons to do it, of which convenience to the blind is just one. But it isn't unreasonble or elitist for us to question where that cost to benefit ratio lies.
Jesus. If you were following the story you would know that these documents are from Saddams pursuit of nuclear weapons prior to the 1991 gulf war. It has never been in dispute that he had an active weapons program before that 1991 war. We sure as f-ck didn't go into Iraq because we though he might still have some documents on how to build an A-bomb. We went into Iraq because he allegedly still had an active weapons program and/or WMDs lying about somewhere, and/or the raw materials to make them. All 3 of which proved to be a complete fabrication.
These documents do not show anything new about what Saddam had or didn't have. They only show that while our government was willing to start a war just in case Saddam was dumb enough to give such designs to a terrorist group that hated him, our government is itself dumb enough to take those designs and give them to a terrorist group that hates us.
I'm not really convinced that this particular example mentioned in the article can legitimately be called a google bomb. The page linked is an article regarding one of the "victim's" positions, and being a controversial position, it doesn't seem that odd that the political blogosphere would have linked to it a ton while talking about Congressman King.
So what makes it a google-bomb? The fact that the most linked to article about the congressman is unflattering? Does that mean congressman Foley was also google bombed?
Real breakthroughs have occured and they violate the "Rules" that are accepted.
No, they do not violate the rules. They merely overcome them or clarify them. An anti-gravity device using thermionic currents for example, does not violate the laws of gravity. It applies the required amount of propulsion to overcome gravity, using thermionic currents. We also have anti-gravity devices using rocket fuel, or hot air. None of them violate the rules.
I should have RTFA, but all that means is that it must get the heart rate and metabolism up enough to burn at least 6 calories more than you otherwise would. My point was just that a drink which does that is very possible, and nothing new, they have just designed this one specifically to do it moreso. (But still not a lot, I'm guessing).
It's a perfectly valid claim, it just doens't mean that much. ANYTHING you put in your body requires calories to process. Even distilled water will cause your body to move the substance through your system and adjust the hormones that regulate hydration, and everything the body does requires energy to do. We have dozens and dozens of 0 calorie beverages which provide no nutrional value and no energy input whatsoever. In a sense, these drinks could already be marketed as "calorie burning". Consuming them takes more energy than they provide. All Coke and Nestle are doing here is creating another zero calorie drink, that happens to contain substances known to ramp up your heart rate and metabolism. In that sense, it is a calorie burning drink. What makes the marketing dishonest is merely that the drink differs from water and coke zero only in that the very small amount of calories that would be burned by drinking it is slightly higher than the very small amount that would be burned by drinking other zero cal things.
Don't worry about uTube, in the long run they will make a heap of money on the Google/YouTube deal. As the consumption of online video continues to grow at an exponential rate, and as Google and the major studios and networks continue to adopt online delivery models for television and film, the infrastructure of the net will naturally have to scale with it. Telecomms and ISPs will be allocating huge sums for the materials they need to expand their physical networks.
Back in the day, that would have benefitted mostly copper and fiber-optics manufacturers, but that was before the technology to move data through a series of tubes came into widespread acceptance. uTube stands to sell BILLIONS of tubes because of this deal.
God damn right. Why is it that the Brits understand our Constitution better than most Americans? The bill of rights is NOT an exhaustive enumeration of all rights, and a right can exist without being listed there. The bill of rights is merely a list of those rights the founding father's were specifically concerned enough to protect with a written "guarantee." (In quotes because it seems they no longer apply).
I'm getting tired of hearing "there is no such right" because the constitution doesn't specifically call it out. It doesn't have to.
Please note that nowhere in the Bill of Rights are you guaranteed the right not to be murdered, or the right to bear children, or the right to learn to read. That doesn't mean you don't have those rights.
This hypothetical situation is making me sad and iritable. Let us consider happier possibilities. . . suppose Lucas permitted Joss Whedon to create the Star Wars tv show?
Since the Firefly universe has no aliens in it, Lucas wouldn't be able to make any puppets, or obscure the story with 5 tons of flashy CGI. He wouldn't be interested.
Star Trek has a tendency to contradict itself in terms of "how things work" and it is usually just technobabble anyway, but despite all the "pattern buffer" stuff, I believe the official explanation on the transporter is that the transported matter is physically broken apart into atoms or subatomic particles, and the particles physically moved to the destination through "subspace." So they physically travel to the destination, but along a path that is outside of normal spacetime.
This of course, is Star Trek, and has precisely zero to do with real physics.
Off topic nitpick, but depending on whether you are counting the dwarf planets or not, there are either 10 other known planets, or 7 other known planets. But not 9.
Not a chance they will settle. When a suit against you is as completely meritless as this one is, and when settling would simply encourage a hundred similar suits to be filed, it is way smarter to just let the case get thrown out of court on it's anthopomorphized ass.
Settling on this would just be inviting every family who's ever lost someone to a murderer that could be shown to have played, seen, or heard of one of their games to file their own suit and get their share.
No! Paper Ballots for elections, yes, but when we vote to launch a Nuke, I say screw the paper. They should issue every citizen in the country a special key which goes with a little electronic box that you mount on your wall. And if more than fifty percent of the country turns their key at the same time, BOOM!
I think everyone is missing the point assuming that the LCD would be used as a computer monitor, displaying computer tasks. More likely it would be used as a television, where Dad watches football from the recliner while Little Timmy watches the latest Pixar flick from the couch. (Wireless headphones required, of course.
I personally can't imagine that there is a huge need for this, but for those people who want that sort of thing, it would beat the hell out of Picture in Picture. . .
It is now 2006. The next presidential election will be held in November 2008. Meaning Bush will leave office in January 2009. If the law calls for the program to go online no later than January 1, 2008, and Bush leaves office in January 2009, by what logic will he be gone when in goes into effect?
I suppose a successful impeachment or assassination would do the trick, but that seems like a long shot.
Now you're telling me there was BLOOD too?!?!? My, my, my, you must have grown up to be quite the serial killer, and I do not approve at all! At least when I harpooned a guy, beat him to death, and then flayed the flesh from his bones with fire, he didn't BLEED.
It is to this that I attribute my having grown into such a fine upstanding citizen.:)
Our whole thread is off-topic, but what the hell.:)
But. ..but. . Sub-zero. . . No, he only froze them and smashed them into shards of ice! If he had ripped their heads off it would have been a terrible influence on me, glorifying violence and whatnot. I'd have surely grown into a mass-murderer if that had been the case!
And Kano. . . ripping hearts out? How terribly violent! No, no, I'm sure that as I recall he only punched through their sternum and then held up his closed fist in victory, that's all. Whew, thank god they didn't let the sort of violence you are describing pollute my mind.
All of these reponses pointing out that they had decades to study the alien ship and would have already developed an interface and studied the shields and whatnot, are forgetting that the captured ship was more or less a lifeless hunk of metal for that entire time. It didn't power up and start doing anything interesting until the mothership arrived. Seems doubtful that they could have developed an interface for a computer system that wasn't turned on until the invasion started.
Slashdot Mirror
News is NOT supposed to be neutral. It is supposed to be objective. Most news outlets today strive to be neutral, which leads to shallow, insipid reporting, in which no outlet has the balls to report anything as fact. Instead they simply report whatever each side of an issue says.
"The admistration said today that flatulence is caused by an evil faerie named Mortimer, however some critics disagree!"
Objective means fact-checking, and reporting what is true. Neutral means echoing every opinion and statement that is fed to you, regardless of the source, in order to treat all standpoints and arguments as equally valid. Neutral is a horrible thing for news to be.
That being said, slashdot can't be called an prime example of neutrality or objectivity.
"Perhaps you have changed your lifestyle to fit your no cash utopia, but to suggest that others do likewise because they had the misfortune to be born blind or to have lost their eyesight is plain wrong."
I agree that we ought to have more easily distinguishable currency, both for the blind and for other practical reasons, but this is a pretty poor argument. These days, doing without cash is a perfectly viable option. As you pointed out, there are plenty of situations where it isn't the MOST preferable option, but it is a perfectly good one. It is not "just plain wrong" to suggest that a small percentage of the population might choose an alternative that works better for their circumstances.
In essence, you are saying that it isn't enough to make sure that the handicapped are accomodated -- that we should instead go to great expense to change our infrastructure so that the best option for you is also the best option for them. Fact is, their circumstances are different, and there is a perfectly good alternative for them, there is nothing wrong with suggesting that the expense to the country of changing our currency outweighs the convenience benefit it would provide to a small minority of the population.
You make it sound as though expecting a handicap to change someones lifestyle is a nazi attitude or something.
We expect the blind to use a cane or a seeing eye-dog when walking around town. We don't remove all the curbs, bumps, fire hydrants, and mailboxes so that they won't have to. We publish books in braille so that they can be read by the blind, but we don't mandate that every book you open have printing on one line and braille right below it so that they won't have to order the braille edition. We build "doorbells" that come with flashing lights for the deaf, but we don't insist that all doorbells be installed with one so that they won't have to go out of there way to get the special kind. We put ramps and elevators in our buildings so that people in a wheelchair can get up and down, but we don't replace every staircase.
If we decide it's "wrong" to expect the differently abled to choose different options, what do you have in mind for automobiles? How do you think we should change them so that nobody has to adopt mass-transit just because they had the misfortune to be born blind? How do you think we should change the radio so that the deaf can listen too?
In the particular case of our currency, I happen to agree with you in thinking that changing it is worthwhile. It isn't that difficult or costly, and there are a lot of good reasons to do it, of which convenience to the blind is just one. But it isn't unreasonble or elitist for us to question where that cost to benefit ratio lies.
Your argument is unsound.
These documents do not show anything new about what Saddam had or didn't have. They only show that while our government was willing to start a war just in case Saddam was dumb enough to give such designs to a terrorist group that hated him, our government is itself dumb enough to take those designs and give them to a terrorist group that hates us.
Bravo. Darwin awards for all!
So what makes it a google-bomb? The fact that the most linked to article about the congressman is unflattering? Does that mean congressman Foley was also google bombed?
Please.
No, they do not violate the rules. They merely overcome them or clarify them. An anti-gravity device using thermionic currents for example, does not violate the laws of gravity. It applies the required amount of propulsion to overcome gravity, using thermionic currents. We also have anti-gravity devices using rocket fuel, or hot air. None of them violate the rules.
I should have RTFA, but all that means is that it must get the heart rate and metabolism up enough to burn at least 6 calories more than you otherwise would. My point was just that a drink which does that is very possible, and nothing new, they have just designed this one specifically to do it moreso. (But still not a lot, I'm guessing).
It's a perfectly valid claim, it just doens't mean that much. ANYTHING you put in your body requires calories to process. Even distilled water will cause your body to move the substance through your system and adjust the hormones that regulate hydration, and everything the body does requires energy to do. We have dozens and dozens of 0 calorie beverages which provide no nutrional value and no energy input whatsoever. In a sense, these drinks could already be marketed as "calorie burning". Consuming them takes more energy than they provide. All Coke and Nestle are doing here is creating another zero calorie drink, that happens to contain substances known to ramp up your heart rate and metabolism. In that sense, it is a calorie burning drink. What makes the marketing dishonest is merely that the drink differs from water and coke zero only in that the very small amount of calories that would be burned by drinking it is slightly higher than the very small amount that would be burned by drinking other zero cal things.
Just be careful when you go into your local greasy spoon and order "the double."
Back in the day, that would have benefitted mostly copper and fiber-optics manufacturers, but that was before the technology to move data through a series of tubes came into widespread acceptance. uTube stands to sell BILLIONS of tubes because of this deal.
I'm getting tired of hearing "there is no such right" because the constitution doesn't specifically call it out. It doesn't have to.
Please note that nowhere in the Bill of Rights are you guaranteed the right not to be murdered, or the right to bear children, or the right to learn to read. That doesn't mean you don't have those rights.
This hypothetical situation is making me sad and iritable. Let us consider happier possibilities. . . suppose Lucas permitted Joss Whedon to create the Star Wars tv show?
Since the Firefly universe has no aliens in it, Lucas wouldn't be able to make any puppets, or obscure the story with 5 tons of flashy CGI. He wouldn't be interested.
In Soviet Russia, joke retires YOU!
This of course, is Star Trek, and has precisely zero to do with real physics.
Off topic nitpick, but depending on whether you are counting the dwarf planets or not, there are either 10 other known planets, or 7 other known planets. But not 9.
I'm giving 5-to-1 on repeal by 2010. Any takers?
Settling on this would just be inviting every family who's ever lost someone to a murderer that could be shown to have played, seen, or heard of one of their games to file their own suit and get their share.
No! Paper Ballots for elections, yes, but when we vote to launch a Nuke, I say screw the paper. They should issue every citizen in the country a special key which goes with a little electronic box that you mount on your wall. And if more than fifty percent of the country turns their key at the same time, BOOM!
I personally can't imagine that there is a huge need for this, but for those people who want that sort of thing, it would beat the hell out of Picture in Picture. . .
It is now 2006. The next presidential election will be held in November 2008. Meaning Bush will leave office in January 2009. If the law calls for the program to go online no later than January 1, 2008, and Bush leaves office in January 2009, by what logic will he be gone when in goes into effect?
I suppose a successful impeachment or assassination would do the trick, but that seems like a long shot.
It is to this that I attribute my having grown into such a fine upstanding citizen. :)
Our whole thread is off-topic, but what the hell. :)
And Kano. . . ripping hearts out? How terribly violent! No, no, I'm sure that as I recall he only punched through their sternum and then held up his closed fist in victory, that's all. Whew, thank god they didn't let the sort of violence you are describing pollute my mind.
All of these reponses pointing out that they had decades to study the alien ship and would have already developed an interface and studied the shields and whatnot, are forgetting that the captured ship was more or less a lifeless hunk of metal for that entire time. It didn't power up and start doing anything interesting until the mothership arrived. Seems doubtful that they could have developed an interface for a computer system that wasn't turned on until the invasion started.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/world/americas/2 1canada.html?ex=1316491200&en=c01819e14cf573a8&ei= 5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Don't forget "We do not torture," and "I am a Texan"