so if we're warming the environment now, they must have been doing it then.
And how does that follow? This seems like a pretty bad straw-man argument. Just because natural warming happened in the PAST doesn't mean we can't cause it NOW.
Things have changed since then, as you may have noticed. There are a few more people around since Caesar, producing a wee bit more pollution. It is true that the models are incomplete, but they seem to give a decent indication that at least part of the warming may be caused by humans.
But if not? We have a cleaner and healthier environment. Damn!
McCain, at one point, may have known his stuff. But he has lost it. There is already a very long list of these gaffes. Is this the kind of face you want America to have?
I would disagree, while there is a (shallow) learning curve, when I plug in a printer it "just works". When I select a random network printer at my school it "just works". Yes, this is because these drivers are all installed (and is an option). The only driver I've had to install myself was NTFS3g, which normal users don't need. What part of OSX doesn't just work for you? Yes, it has its kinks and oddities (why is there not a damn simple paint program that comes with it?), but most of the differences between OSX and Windows can be learned in an hour or two. Please, if you are going to say it doesn't "just work" use some examples. My experiences obviously differ from yours. But then, I'm one of the guys who bought it because I liked having a nice UI on top of a *nix terminal.
The dock is different from the taskbar, but it is pretty easy to pick up. My 83 year old grandfather picked it up in about 2 or 3 minutes. Couldn't most users?
Most laptops I've used have a pretty quick release on the battery. Pulling the power cord and popping out the battery in a couple seconds doesn't seem unreasonable.
ID is not a theory. Please stop perverting that word. A "theory" is a scientific term for a model that is backed by evidence, has not been rejected by evidence, and is falsifiable.
ID is NOT backed by evidence and is NOT falsifiable, thus it is NOT a theory. It is a belief. Evolution can be proved wrong. ID cannot be.
Of course, nothing in science is ever proven correct either, we just teach the best model we have and work from there. If someone discovers a better model, the current one gets replaced. Keep ID where it belongs: in a comparative religion or philosophy course. It is not science.
ID has no place in any science curriculum. It has just as much place as Last Thursdayism or FSMism./rant.
I don't understand the need to get away from pen and paper voting. What wonderful benefits does e-voting bring us? The ability to vote from home? You have that, it is called an absentee ballot. Fancy touch screens? Who cares? This is an election, not a technology floor show.
All it really seems to bring us is a lack of transparency and an unnecessary addition of complexity. Keep it simple, keep it transparent, keep it verifiable. It is much harder to stuff thousands of precincts around the country than it is to edit a couple databases.
The only reason for e-voting I have seen is for accessibility. Handicapped people have been voting in this country for a long time now, and the current system seems to work. Yes, it is conceivable that the person ticking the vote box for them may tick the wrong one on purpose, but even if that happens every single time it affects maybe 10-15 votes per precinct? Just keep it simple.
And if you have the ability to "personally" check how one's vote counted, then your boss has the ability to "personally" check how you voted. If you have a private username or something that only you know, but your boss knows you have it, it is very easy to set up a "show me how you voted or you lose your job" scenario.
This is one of the reasons the current system was set up the way it was, where you do not leave the ballot box with anything. This was an issue in the past, and one that I would rather not welcome back.
But people are breaking the law to get the music for a reason: the RIAA is behind the times. People aren't going to stop breaking the law because it should "make them feel icky for doing it." Moral reasons aside, if you can get a good for free, with such a slight chance of retribution, why not do it?
The RIAA needs to find a way to harness this to make money. Pissing off their customers isn't going to help, they need to adapt their business model to the new market that has emerged around their good. They aren't doing this, and they are suffering.
I for one do not feel bad for them. They can either adapt or die. People aren't going to change their behavior (that is now pretty well ingrained, especially in the younger crowd) because the RIAA wants them to.
That being said, people should buy their music directly from the artists. Support the music you like if you want to hear more of it.
Agreed, such situations happen quite regularly. Very often front companies are set up to buy land, dump hazardous waste, and then disappear into the night.
Sorry, I got them mixed up, 20% second degree, some third degree. The coffee (by McDonalds' standards) was kept between 180-190 degrees F. They have since lowered the temperature.
You can, of course, look up the facts of the case and make sure I read them correctly, but third degree burns were cited as an injury.
In fact, during testimony, one of the Doctors brought in as an expert witness stated that at just ten degrees cool, the burns would have been very mild.
Offtopic, but that "old-lady vs McDonalds" lawsuit was actually valid, though it was taken by the tort-reform people and manipulated to seem like a silly lawsuit.
McDonalds had been warned several times by the FDA to lower the temperature of their coffee, as several people each year were severely burned by it. The woman was in the passenger seat, her son was driving, and they had pulled off to the side of the drive-thru so she could put sugar in the coffee. When opening the lid, the cup slipped and spilled on to her lap.
The woman suffered third degree burns over her thigh and groin area, totaling to be about 20% of her body, and second degree burns in her groin area.
She then contacted McDonalds, explaining the situation to them, and asked them to reimburse part of her medical bills (for burn treatment and skin grafts). They offered her $500. Since her bills were quickly climbing into the high tens of thousands of dollars, she sued for the cost of her medical expenses.
It was the jury that decided medical expenses were not enough, and awarded her punitive damages (to punish McDonalds) totaling one day's revenue in coffee sales. McDonalds appealed the decision, and an appellate judge overturned the punitive damages. She ended up getting somewhere around $200,000, which barely covered her medical expenses up to that point.
Sorry, that was very off topic, but that case is misused as an example for tort reform so often I felt it needed to be stated. There are other ridiculous cases, sure, but that really isn't one of them. More info here.
5) Downloading movies you don't own is letter-of-the-law illegal. Making a copy of a DVD you have rented is just a bit on the legal side of the grey area... You are allowed to indefinitely time-shift rented DVDs just as you are with TV programs. Nobody wants to talk about this terribly inconvenient fact, however.
Psst... DVDs are encrypted (badly, but still) thus, when you copy them, you are circumventing copy protection, which is a patent violation of the DMCA. Nice try justifying it though!
The Court lacks the power of the sword and the power of the purse. They have no enforcement power and no monetary power. They are only as powerful as the other branches let them be. It is a very delicate balance. Of course, they are utilized by the elected branches to decide issues that would be political suicide to take a stand on, and that is what they are they for.
That is why they are appointed for life "while in good behavior". This has come to mean anything short of being imprisoned or bribed (even then...) will let you keep your judgeship. But these people are supposed to be the intellectual barrier between the law and the masses. They are supposed to keep congressmen, who have to follow the whims of their constituents, in check. And for the most part, they do.
Putting judges under popular control would allow all of the branches to fall to "fly-by-night" laws and legislation, severely undermining the relatively stable system we have now.
and much of the common law system is founded on vagueness. It allows for laws to be adapted over time rather than being too specific and having to write a new law for each case. What you are proposing is more like what the UK has in place, where judges are not interpreting the law, but rather handing down what Parliament said should be.
Having laws that are too specific means that we would need to have many, many more laws passed in order to "cover all of the bases" and keep up with changing laws and technology. Because of the way Congress is set up (planned gridlock to slow law making and knee jerk reactions) this would bring our entire system to a halt.
Another point is that, being a federalist nation, forcing laws to be created like this would take power away from the states. The states, essentially, can make up laws however the heck they want. The feds forcing states laws to go through a process like this screams infringement on the principles of federalism.
It also seems that a process like this would slow down the already extremely burdened process of law making, and with what is proposed, the extra laws that would need to be created would either A) Force complete gridlock or B) Create a much larger bureaucracy to deal with the added burden. Probably both, as the parties would never agree on what is "too vague" or not, giving them the perfect opportunity to strike down laws they didn't like.
Slashdot Mirror
so if we're warming the environment now, they must have been doing it then.
And how does that follow? This seems like a pretty bad straw-man argument. Just because natural warming happened in the PAST doesn't mean we can't cause it NOW .
Things have changed since then, as you may have noticed. There are a few more people around since Caesar, producing a wee bit more pollution. It is true that the models are incomplete, but they seem to give a decent indication that at least part of the warming may be caused by humans.
But if not? We have a cleaner and healthier environment. Damn!
And how does one submit these "fucking prayers"?
You're right, we need a President who is very concerned about the Iraq/Pakistan border. I'd also like him confuse Sudan and Somalia, after all, they are like the same thing, right?
McCain, at one point, may have known his stuff. But he has lost it. There is already a very long list of these gaffes. Is this the kind of face you want America to have?
See depleted uranium bullets.
I would disagree, while there is a (shallow) learning curve, when I plug in a printer it "just works". When I select a random network printer at my school it "just works". Yes, this is because these drivers are all installed (and is an option). The only driver I've had to install myself was NTFS3g, which normal users don't need. What part of OSX doesn't just work for you? Yes, it has its kinks and oddities (why is there not a damn simple paint program that comes with it?), but most of the differences between OSX and Windows can be learned in an hour or two. Please, if you are going to say it doesn't "just work" use some examples. My experiences obviously differ from yours. But then, I'm one of the guys who bought it because I liked having a nice UI on top of a *nix terminal.
The dock is different from the taskbar, but it is pretty easy to pick up. My 83 year old grandfather picked it up in about 2 or 3 minutes. Couldn't most users?
You're right. I absolutely would. :-)
The congressmen can't be that stupid right?
You must be new here...
Most laptops I've used have a pretty quick release on the battery. Pulling the power cord and popping out the battery in a couple seconds doesn't seem unreasonable.
Go Western Michigan! Oh... wait... our car broke already...
Go someone else!
it was a mediocre fantasy show about battling demons and vampires with boobs
Fixed.
ID is not a theory. Please stop perverting that word. A "theory" is a scientific term for a model that is backed by evidence, has not been rejected by evidence, and is falsifiable.
/rant.
ID is NOT backed by evidence and is NOT falsifiable, thus it is NOT a theory. It is a belief. Evolution can be proved wrong. ID cannot be.
Of course, nothing in science is ever proven correct either, we just teach the best model we have and work from there. If someone discovers a better model, the current one gets replaced. Keep ID where it belongs: in a comparative religion or philosophy course. It is not science.
ID has no place in any science curriculum. It has just as much place as Last Thursdayism or FSMism.
I don't understand the need to get away from pen and paper voting. What wonderful benefits does e-voting bring us? The ability to vote from home? You have that, it is called an absentee ballot. Fancy touch screens? Who cares? This is an election, not a technology floor show.
All it really seems to bring us is a lack of transparency and an unnecessary addition of complexity. Keep it simple, keep it transparent, keep it verifiable. It is much harder to stuff thousands of precincts around the country than it is to edit a couple databases.
The only reason for e-voting I have seen is for accessibility. Handicapped people have been voting in this country for a long time now, and the current system seems to work. Yes, it is conceivable that the person ticking the vote box for them may tick the wrong one on purpose, but even if that happens every single time it affects maybe 10-15 votes per precinct? Just keep it simple.
Or maybe you didn't vote the way the Police Chief wanted you do (that is, for him). Good luck having the police track down those thugs then.
And if you have the ability to "personally" check how one's vote counted, then your boss has the ability to "personally" check how you voted. If you have a private username or something that only you know, but your boss knows you have it, it is very easy to set up a "show me how you voted or you lose your job" scenario.
This is one of the reasons the current system was set up the way it was, where you do not leave the ballot box with anything. This was an issue in the past, and one that I would rather not welcome back.
But people are breaking the law to get the music for a reason: the RIAA is behind the times. People aren't going to stop breaking the law because it should "make them feel icky for doing it." Moral reasons aside, if you can get a good for free, with such a slight chance of retribution, why not do it?
The RIAA needs to find a way to harness this to make money. Pissing off their customers isn't going to help, they need to adapt their business model to the new market that has emerged around their good. They aren't doing this, and they are suffering.
I for one do not feel bad for them. They can either adapt or die. People aren't going to change their behavior (that is now pretty well ingrained, especially in the younger crowd) because the RIAA wants them to.
That being said, people should buy their music directly from the artists. Support the music you like if you want to hear more of it.
Agreed, such situations happen quite regularly. Very often front companies are set up to buy land, dump hazardous waste, and then disappear into the night.
Sorry, I got them mixed up, 20% second degree, some third degree. The coffee (by McDonalds' standards) was kept between 180-190 degrees F. They have since lowered the temperature.
You can, of course, look up the facts of the case and make sure I read them correctly, but third degree burns were cited as an injury.
In fact, during testimony, one of the Doctors brought in as an expert witness stated that at just ten degrees cool, the burns would have been very mild.
Offtopic, but that "old-lady vs McDonalds" lawsuit was actually valid, though it was taken by the tort-reform people and manipulated to seem like a silly lawsuit.
McDonalds had been warned several times by the FDA to lower the temperature of their coffee, as several people each year were severely burned by it. The woman was in the passenger seat, her son was driving, and they had pulled off to the side of the drive-thru so she could put sugar in the coffee. When opening the lid, the cup slipped and spilled on to her lap.
The woman suffered third degree burns over her thigh and groin area, totaling to be about 20% of her body, and second degree burns in her groin area.
She then contacted McDonalds, explaining the situation to them, and asked them to reimburse part of her medical bills (for burn treatment and skin grafts). They offered her $500. Since her bills were quickly climbing into the high tens of thousands of dollars, she sued for the cost of her medical expenses.
It was the jury that decided medical expenses were not enough, and awarded her punitive damages (to punish McDonalds) totaling one day's revenue in coffee sales. McDonalds appealed the decision, and an appellate judge overturned the punitive damages. She ended up getting somewhere around $200,000, which barely covered her medical expenses up to that point.
Sorry, that was very off topic, but that case is misused as an example for tort reform so often I felt it needed to be stated. There are other ridiculous cases, sure, but that really isn't one of them. More info here.
5) Downloading movies you don't own is letter-of-the-law illegal. Making a copy of a DVD you have rented is just a bit on the legal side of the grey area... You are allowed to indefinitely time-shift rented DVDs just as you are with TV programs. Nobody wants to talk about this terribly inconvenient fact, however.
Psst... DVDs are encrypted (badly, but still) thus, when you copy them, you are circumventing copy protection, which is a patent violation of the DMCA. Nice try justifying it though!
I believe there have been a few documentaries on this subject.
I found to be very informative and enlightening. However, I was confused by the multiple Jesuses, but I don't like to question things.
The Court lacks the power of the sword and the power of the purse. They have no enforcement power and no monetary power. They are only as powerful as the other branches let them be. It is a very delicate balance. Of course, they are utilized by the elected branches to decide issues that would be political suicide to take a stand on, and that is what they are they for.
That is why they are appointed for life "while in good behavior". This has come to mean anything short of being imprisoned or bribed (even then...) will let you keep your judgeship. But these people are supposed to be the intellectual barrier between the law and the masses. They are supposed to keep congressmen, who have to follow the whims of their constituents, in check. And for the most part, they do.
Putting judges under popular control would allow all of the branches to fall to "fly-by-night" laws and legislation, severely undermining the relatively stable system we have now.
and much of the common law system is founded on vagueness. It allows for laws to be adapted over time rather than being too specific and having to write a new law for each case. What you are proposing is more like what the UK has in place, where judges are not interpreting the law, but rather handing down what Parliament said should be.
Having laws that are too specific means that we would need to have many, many more laws passed in order to "cover all of the bases" and keep up with changing laws and technology. Because of the way Congress is set up (planned gridlock to slow law making and knee jerk reactions) this would bring our entire system to a halt.
Another point is that, being a federalist nation, forcing laws to be created like this would take power away from the states. The states, essentially, can make up laws however the heck they want. The feds forcing states laws to go through a process like this screams infringement on the principles of federalism.
It also seems that a process like this would slow down the already extremely burdened process of law making, and with what is proposed, the extra laws that would need to be created would either A) Force complete gridlock or B) Create a much larger bureaucracy to deal with the added burden. Probably both, as the parties would never agree on what is "too vague" or not, giving them the perfect opportunity to strike down laws they didn't like.
Evolution, of course!
Oh my god, I want to watch that show so bad now. That is exactly how Iron Chef America should be!
Oh. Snap. Son.