I think it depends on the school and the program. If you're studying in the humanities, you're probably not going to be working in a group for homework. In my case I studied mechanical engineering. The way I studied for the exams was by doing homework (in many cases I'd be assigned ~3 problems to solve over the course of a week - this could be anywhere from 20 minutes to 10 hours of work.) The homework was frequently more rigorous than the exams in many cases, the only was for even the smartest students in my courses to solve some problems was to work it out with others. If one student recognizes a problem solving technique while doing homework, and teaches the others that is a net positive. No student in many programs will be able to independently solve all the problems. Which is better, seeking help from time strapped and occasionally unhelpful professors, not completing the problem, or working in a group to learn how to do it?
The university would never crack down on even a large group of students in a library.
When I was studying engineering it was not uncommon for 40-60% of the class to sit around in a student lounge (or computer lab) in the mechanical engineering building to work problems. Everyone worked together, and in was not uncommon to have 30+ people working on the same problem. All a prof had to do to see what was going on was to stick his head out of his office and walk down the hall (which some frequently did). When that happened the group would grow by 1 and the prof would be helping everyone with the problem too.
Now, that said, I still have mixed feeling about this. I take the student being charged saying no one posted complete solutions with a grain of salt. There is something different about students working a problem around a library table and students passing a solution around a library table. I don't think the student should be expelled, but depending on what was actually posted it might be appropriate to send a message to the student body that this type of "studying" is not appropriate. If you want to collaborate in person we'll turn a blind eye like we always have, but posting solutions (even if they're not complete) on the web for anyone to copy without even being party to the problem solving process is straddling the line of appropriateness.
I'd also like to add that the prof in this case strikes me as a prick. There are about a dozen better ways to handle this. Given that there are 100+ students this is most likely a chem 101 type weed out class. The prof doesn't want to be teaching it, and the majority of the students don't want to be learning it. The case could probably be made that the student admining the group was probably one of the dedicated ones with a genuine interest in learning, after all, he put in the effort to get a group to work together, even if it was a tad ill conceived.
Would it be reasonable to assume that James Madison (the father of the constitution) employed spies during the war of 1812? Would it further be reasonable to assume that any espionage upon the British during this time was carried out without the proper warrants?
If those scenarios are reasonable, I think a legitimate argument can be mounted that the fourth amendment does not, and was never intended to apply to all people regardless of citizenship, location, or political situation.
Sweet Jesus, imagine the fall out if a toy (because, as we all know, all video games are toys), shipped with mercury switches today.
I mean weren't parent groups outraged last Christmas that some plastic toys had nasty organic chemicals that might be accessible if their toddler melted them in 5N HCl?
I haven't been following closely, but I'd expect that ratings would be down overall. I'd further expect that ratings would be way down on the flagship stations (NBC, CBS, FOX, and ABC), and up a bit on the cable channels (FX, USA, TNT, etc.) But that's still got to hurt the media companies right? The decreased value of an NBC ad wouldn't be offset by the modest increase in a BRAVO ad would it?
Does anyone have any links to any actual analysis of the financial effects of the writers strike on the media companies?
Decreasing jet noise is in fact very difficult, but it is also a major area of research in mechanical engineering departments across the country.
No, unfortunately this massive research thrust isn't aimed at making jet packs more practical, but rest assured, gains in reducing aircraft jet noise could be applied to jet packs.
The noise a jet makes is the result of turbulent mixing of the high speed jet with the low speed surrounding air. Some solutions are simple, like the chevron edges on the Boeing 787 others are a bit more complicated involving heating, cooling, or electrically charging the exiting jet. The goal being always to make the mixing of the jet and surrounding air less turbulent. Suffice to say you're not likely to have a picnic next to an operating jet engine anytime soon, but it is an active area of research.
I don't know what the legal requirement is, but at my former employer (fortune 100 company) all "General Business" emails were supposed to be archived for 3 years (there were also 5, 7, 10, and forever archives, the only other category that I remember is that technical information was retained forever.)
The onus for archiving was on the user, but if you didn't archive it you lost it after a year (90 days) if it was in your inbox.
As the sibling poster points out, there are a lot of very specific document retention laws as a result of SOX.
Read Eric Burn's op-ed, but don't expect to learn anything, it's simple and sensationalized.
Basically, Eric whines about how Americans have gotten stupider, and how their attention span have dropped. There is no mention, not even the slightest hint that maybe, just maybe the news networks might have had a hand in this lack of interest in public affairs. He makes gratuitous use of referring to himself (the media) in the third person, and makes no apologies.
The media may be between a rock and a hard place, but hey, that's life, and I see precious few media outlets taking the high road. Maybe with the writers strike and a particularly captivating primary race FOX could put something like Meet the Press on during primetime (on FOX not FOX NEWS) before Who Wants to Strangle a Midget? and Watch Me Take a Dump in the Corner.
That would never happen because the media exec's forgone conclusions regarding the intelligence of their audience. Meanwhile, those of us who want real news will increasingly turn to the internet (which may be severely biased, but typically isn't nearly as simplified as the mainstream media) supplemented by Comedy Central for our infotainment.
Ok, I'm not a software or GUI guy of any shade, but I have to wonder why microsoft doesn't simply add a button to their interface (say way down in the lower left of the window) that if clicked switches between the render modes.
This way standards compliant code renders properly without cute little tricks like this, and the user blames the web-developer for the sloppy web page.
It's easy, the first time you open IE8 a page comes up that explains if things don't look quite right, as some pages were designed for older browsers, try clicking this button in the corner and see if it makes things better.
Sorry, didn't mean to rail against you, it's just that the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag has sort of been irritating me - and your comment seemed the right for me to air my feelings.
Someone else further down noted that for a tech site slashdot sure seems to have a lot of luddites.
It amazes me how there are so many people who, in one breath, will argue that we desperately need more funding to the basic sciences, and in the next will claim that any actual research should be halted because of the couldbe's.
Look, the people studying ebola are smart and they are safe. The people at the CDC and elsewhere have, I'm sure, explored the full spectrum of Michael Crichton related disasters. They may even have considered some other pulp fiction horrors, as well as actual real life threats.
Viral research is important, and yet, despite all the armchair virologists here on slashdot somehow we glossed over that this actually is making the virus safer to study, so that perhaps someday, Outbreak can be prevented.
But religions are a threat to rational thought all by themselves
You may be right, but religions certainly don't have a monopoly on that particular threat. I think it is a basic survival skill. Since humans are social animals it occasionally behooves us to not question authority. In prehistory, and still today in many parts of the world having too rational a mind can get you killed. Now, that's certainly not something we should try to exploit when building future civilizations, but it is a fundamental and unalterable portion of human nature.
My point is that even the staunchest atheist yelling about how reason trumps all else can still get swept up in ultra-nationalistic fervor - against all reason. We are simply not programmed to examine every choice with a critical mind, and even if a few individuals are able to rise to that standard the vast majority of humanity never will. Even if all religion is eliminated, people will still be swayed by irrational rhetoric that seeks to group and separate people. The goal of a secularist shouldn't be to eliminate religion, it should be to eliminate the us vs. them attitude that all large scale violence is contingent upon. Here's why your views make me uneasy, they promote that mentality. In my opinion your views, carried to their logical conclusion wouldn't do anything to quell violence in the long term, they would simply substitute groups of atheists chanting anti-religious slogans for Islamists chanting anti-western slogans.
On the subject of heckling, I'm afraid you've misunderstood me, at least in part. The reason that any movement is successful is that, at least in its founding stages, it gathers in private where the members participation reinforces the speakers message. If a heckler disrupts a private gathering he will be asked (or forced) to leave. During these private gatherings the virulent speeches and the congregation's tacit acceptance has phenomenal recruiting power. It goes back to what I said earlier about how humans, as social animals, have a great ability to turn off all reason. A successful group will not endanger itself by staging poorly planned public events where hecklers can disrupt the message. These groups gain members not by massive public demonstrations, but rather by individual private recruiting. Even if a group does hold public gathering, hecklers will tend to increase the us vs. them mentality, and thus the groups solidarity, and may even win the group more recruits.
As an aside, heckling may be successful against poorly planned or executed gatherings like the KKK's of late, but it could never be successful against a better organized group. Heckling isn't what caused the KKK's membership to plummet from it's heyday, it was changing social views. That is precisely why secularists shouldn't seek to create their own group to do battle with the religious groups. Secularists should seek to change the game, reject us vs. themism, and soften the borders. To the extent that secularism has been successful it has been because it is a movement, not a group. There is no reason someone can't be both a secularist and religious. In fact, those people are secularisms greatest strength. Their creed is tolerance, not some metaphysical mumbo-jumbo like Christianity or Atheism.
Science will never "defeat" religion, and it shouldn't seek to. Science is fundamentally unable to answer the metaphysical questions that religion seeks to address. It shouldn't matter what conclusions your metaphysical views cause you to draw, whether nihilistic or messianic, so long as you are tolerant of others.
Personally I don't think religion is dangerous. Far from it. However, some religious people are undoubtedly dangerous. Plenty of non-religious people are equally dangerous.
I think condemnation of religion is prosecuting a perceived cause, and wholly failing to get to the actual root problem. In my opinion, the root cause of violence is always socio-economic. Sometimes religion is a convenient pretext to move the masses in your direction. Sometimes race or tribal groups proves more advantageous. Look at Kenya, Sudan, and Rwanda.
I also think that heckling (what you seem to propose) is a dangerous way of discrediting others. It's disrespectful and intolerant, and therefore prone to backfire. Virulent speeches might have good recruiting power, but public condemnation of others is only effective when it is reinforced daily by friends, not some when applied sporadically by some anonymous nut job in a crowd. The only way anyone's mind really gets changed is through civil discourse.
Yes, there is danger in religious literalism, but the answer isn't banning religion, it's recognizing the social and historical framework in which religious works were written. Look, I can quote Shakespeare and Dostoevsky to fuel anti-Zionist sentiment just as easily as the Koran. If someone chooses to believe that their book is inspired by god, who am I to disagree? It's when people claim that their (translated) book is the absolute, unalterable, and uninterpreted word of god that I get a little uneasy. Literature, any literature, contains nuance and if taken in a vacuum it will lead to conclusions not intended by the author.
Muhammad condemned the infidels, and on its face that may seem damning. However, taken in context, he was actually condemning a very specific group of tribal Arab polytheists who had waged war specifically against him. The Old Testament is full of fire and brimstone. The Hebrews were a conquering band, and their religious writings reflect that reality. The danger arises when one separates a verse from context and history and applies it generally.
Fundamentally, religion is a mystical experience. The mystics of any tradition almost universally tend to be non-violent. The people we need to watch out for are not the people who attempt to bring themselves closer to god, but rather the proselytizers who believe that their own world view should be thrust upon their neighbors. It matters not whether these proselytizers are Muslim, Christian, Hindu, or Atheist. When someone tells me that their beliefs are the only right ones, I take pause.
The fundamental problem with these arguments is that secularism and prosecution of people you disagree with are diametrically opposed.
The secularist is perfectly free to say that religion is dangerous, and no one should be religious. The second he adds, "and we should do something about it," he ceases being a secularist and becomes an extremist himself.
If religious extremists are threating violence you have cause for action. If you act against religious people because you don't like what they believe you are a hypocrite.
It should also be noted that you simply cannot move against religion without simultaneously moving against freedom of speech and assembly. It seems to me that your idea of a secular society is pragmatically similar to Islamic sharia, in the same way that fascist Germany was pragmatically similar to communist Russia.
If we're going to throw around fallacies, you can reject the source, but in doing so you don't discredit his conclusion. To reject his conclusion because there is a fallacy in it is the fallacy fallacy.
For example, If I were to say, "Your an idiot, everyone knows libertarian policies are asinine. Especially that fair tax thing. Don't you know that sales taxes are regressive? Any attempt to make a sales tax not regressive would leave so many loop-holes that you could drive a fleet of hummers through them. Now don't get me started on what a libertarian would do to the environment."
You can't dismiss my conclusion because I called you names, you actually have to address the argument.
P.S you're probably not an idiot - colorful language added to emphasize my point.
I've heard that explanation dozens of times in the media, most notably from John Zogby. While that could account a portion of the shift you can't possibly believe it is the main reason Obama's 10 point lead evaporated?
I'm more inclined to believe it had to do with Clinton getting so much news on Sunday and Monday as a result of her moment of emotion. Couple the late news with the fact that many polls stopped polling by Sunday, and the others were reporting 3-day averages, and I think the late deciders account for the discrepancy.
Really? You don't think it'd be leading news on every news outlet in the world if it turned out that the diebold machines borked the election?
Personally, I don't think a recount needs to be done, and I expect it to be a non-issue, but if you've watched CNN lately you'd realize that they are reporting absolutely everything that has anything to do with any of the elections. Even if the recount still proclaims Clinton the victor but shaves a point off her margin of victory it would at least be mentioned in the national media. Also while the media crowned Clinton winner of New Hampshire they're not counting Obama out. Remember this is the same media that declared that Obama was a shoo-in all the way up until the polls closed - so I wouldn't overstate their power.
I think the real story here is how desperately all states need voter-verified paper trails - because a recount without a paper trail is useless.
That's what I thought at first too, but the thing is wealthier Dems are more likely to support Obama, and poorer voters are more likely to support Clinton.
Therefore, if what your positing is true Hillary should have been over represented in the polls, not vice-versa.
I'm not saying that it's impossible voters using electronic voting machines correlated with Clinton supporters, but it does fly in the face of conventional wisdom.
One interesting thing is that apparently all the NH dem primary ballots had the candidates listed in alphabetical order (Clinton first) which is a departure from the standard practice of alternating the order in which the candidates are listed. I've read listing order can cause a swing of up to 3% - so if the ballots were randomized it's a horse-race. That's still not enough to account for the massive 10 point difference in the polls, but it is something to think about.
While I have no doubt that that is true, I guess that leads me to this question:
Does he really want someone filter every electronic exchange between individuals? A system like YouTube's or MySpace's only works because they are the gatekeeper. Who is the gatekeeper of a torrent, of emule? Look, the p2p software/protocol developers learned their lesson from napster - no central index means no gatekeeper.
And as to the inevitable suggestion that comcast could do this, why in the world should an ISP be any more responsible for the data that travels through it than the USPS?
The point I would like to see Rick Cotton address is how his mythical "workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive" addresses the problem that copy protection only needs to be broken once to show up on the file sharing networks. After that any copy protection only serves to burden the rightful owner.
"Workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive" only stops the casual pirate from uploading their file. It does nothing from stopping the casual pirate from downloading a cracked file that a serious pirate uploaded.
If the content producers are dead set on controlling the flow of their material given the realities of broadband, what they're looking for is digital watermarks, not digital locks. At least in that case you can track down whoever it was that originally purchased the file. No it doesn't work with any content that was ever given away freely (I'm still not sure why you'd want to protect that anyway) and no it isn't perfect. Yes, it is also a bit of closing the barn door after the horses are out, but it at least has some deterrent value.
If I simply draw just the ford logo it isn't protected by copyright, as it fails to meet the minimum standards of originality. Specifically, titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs cannot be copyrighted
Now if I draw a picture of a mustang (or Ford produces any concept or product drawings, photos, or brochures) that specific work is copyrighted. That does not mean that I can't copy the logo because it is included in a copyrighted work somewhere (which is what you said).
Trademarks are specifically not covered by copyright. I can copy the ford logo deliberately and without permission, directly from their site and reuse it on my site, provided the use of the mark is made in good faith for the purpose of merely describing the goods or services to which the mark relates or to accurately indicate compatibility with another's goods or services.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it depends on the school and the program. If you're studying in the humanities, you're probably not going to be working in a group for homework. In my case I studied mechanical engineering. The way I studied for the exams was by doing homework (in many cases I'd be assigned ~3 problems to solve over the course of a week - this could be anywhere from 20 minutes to 10 hours of work.) The homework was frequently more rigorous than the exams in many cases, the only was for even the smartest students in my courses to solve some problems was to work it out with others. If one student recognizes a problem solving technique while doing homework, and teaches the others that is a net positive. No student in many programs will be able to independently solve all the problems. Which is better, seeking help from time strapped and occasionally unhelpful professors, not completing the problem, or working in a group to learn how to do it?
The university would never crack down on even a large group of students in a library.
When I was studying engineering it was not uncommon for 40-60% of the class to sit around in a student lounge (or computer lab) in the mechanical engineering building to work problems. Everyone worked together, and in was not uncommon to have 30+ people working on the same problem. All a prof had to do to see what was going on was to stick his head out of his office and walk down the hall (which some frequently did). When that happened the group would grow by 1 and the prof would be helping everyone with the problem too.
Now, that said, I still have mixed feeling about this. I take the student being charged saying no one posted complete solutions with a grain of salt. There is something different about students working a problem around a library table and students passing a solution around a library table. I don't think the student should be expelled, but depending on what was actually posted it might be appropriate to send a message to the student body that this type of "studying" is not appropriate. If you want to collaborate in person we'll turn a blind eye like we always have, but posting solutions (even if they're not complete) on the web for anyone to copy without even being party to the problem solving process is straddling the line of appropriateness.
I'd also like to add that the prof in this case strikes me as a prick. There are about a dozen better ways to handle this. Given that there are 100+ students this is most likely a chem 101 type weed out class. The prof doesn't want to be teaching it, and the majority of the students don't want to be learning it. The case could probably be made that the student admining the group was probably one of the dedicated ones with a genuine interest in learning, after all, he put in the effort to get a group to work together, even if it was a tad ill conceived.
Would it be reasonable to assume that James Madison (the father of the constitution) employed spies during the war of 1812? Would it further be reasonable to assume that any espionage upon the British during this time was carried out without the proper warrants?
If those scenarios are reasonable, I think a legitimate argument can be mounted that the fourth amendment does not, and was never intended to apply to all people regardless of citizenship, location, or political situation.
Sweet Jesus, imagine the fall out if a toy (because, as we all know, all video games are toys), shipped with mercury switches today.
I mean weren't parent groups outraged last Christmas that some plastic toys had nasty organic chemicals that might be accessible if their toddler melted them in 5N HCl?
Is that true?
I haven't been following closely, but I'd expect that ratings would be down overall. I'd further expect that ratings would be way down on the flagship stations (NBC, CBS, FOX, and ABC), and up a bit on the cable channels (FX, USA, TNT, etc.) But that's still got to hurt the media companies right? The decreased value of an NBC ad wouldn't be offset by the modest increase in a BRAVO ad would it?
Does anyone have any links to any actual analysis of the financial effects of the writers strike on the media companies?
Decreasing jet noise is in fact very difficult, but it is also a major area of research in mechanical engineering departments across the country.
No, unfortunately this massive research thrust isn't aimed at making jet packs more practical, but rest assured, gains in reducing aircraft jet noise could be applied to jet packs.
The noise a jet makes is the result of turbulent mixing of the high speed jet with the low speed surrounding air. Some solutions are simple, like the chevron edges on the Boeing 787 others are a bit more complicated involving heating, cooling, or electrically charging the exiting jet. The goal being always to make the mixing of the jet and surrounding air less turbulent. Suffice to say you're not likely to have a picnic next to an operating jet engine anytime soon, but it is an active area of research.
I don't know what the legal requirement is, but at my former employer (fortune 100 company) all "General Business" emails were supposed to be archived for 3 years (there were also 5, 7, 10, and forever archives, the only other category that I remember is that technical information was retained forever.)
The onus for archiving was on the user, but if you didn't archive it you lost it after a year (90 days) if it was in your inbox.
As the sibling poster points out, there are a lot of very specific document retention laws as a result of SOX.
Read Eric Burn's op-ed, but don't expect to learn anything, it's simple and sensationalized.
Basically, Eric whines about how Americans have gotten stupider, and how their attention span have dropped. There is no mention, not even the slightest hint that maybe, just maybe the news networks might have had a hand in this lack of interest in public affairs. He makes gratuitous use of referring to himself (the media) in the third person, and makes no apologies.
The media may be between a rock and a hard place, but hey, that's life, and I see precious few media outlets taking the high road. Maybe with the writers strike and a particularly captivating primary race FOX could put something like Meet the Press on during primetime (on FOX not FOX NEWS) before Who Wants to Strangle a Midget? and Watch Me Take a Dump in the Corner.
That would never happen because the media exec's forgone conclusions regarding the intelligence of their audience. Meanwhile, those of us who want real news will increasingly turn to the internet (which may be severely biased, but typically isn't nearly as simplified as the mainstream media) supplemented by Comedy Central for our infotainment.
Ok, I'm not a software or GUI guy of any shade, but I have to wonder why microsoft doesn't simply add a button to their interface (say way down in the lower left of the window) that if clicked switches between the render modes.
This way standards compliant code renders properly without cute little tricks like this, and the user blames the web-developer for the sloppy web page.
It's easy, the first time you open IE8 a page comes up that explains if things don't look quite right, as some pages were designed for older browsers, try clicking this button in the corner and see if it makes things better.
Sorry, didn't mean to rail against you, it's just that the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag has sort of been irritating me - and your comment seemed the right for me to air my feelings.
Someone else further down noted that for a tech site slashdot sure seems to have a lot of luddites.
Anyways, apologies again - nothing personal.
It amazes me how there are so many people who, in one breath, will argue that we desperately need more funding to the basic sciences, and in the next will claim that any actual research should be halted because of the couldbe's.
Look, the people studying ebola are smart and they are safe. The people at the CDC and elsewhere have, I'm sure, explored the full spectrum of Michael Crichton related disasters. They may even have considered some other pulp fiction horrors, as well as actual real life threats.
Viral research is important, and yet, despite all the armchair virologists here on slashdot somehow we glossed over that this actually is making the virus safer to study, so that perhaps someday, Outbreak can be prevented.
You may be right, but religions certainly don't have a monopoly on that particular threat. I think it is a basic survival skill. Since humans are social animals it occasionally behooves us to not question authority. In prehistory, and still today in many parts of the world having too rational a mind can get you killed. Now, that's certainly not something we should try to exploit when building future civilizations, but it is a fundamental and unalterable portion of human nature.
My point is that even the staunchest atheist yelling about how reason trumps all else can still get swept up in ultra-nationalistic fervor - against all reason. We are simply not programmed to examine every choice with a critical mind, and even if a few individuals are able to rise to that standard the vast majority of humanity never will. Even if all religion is eliminated, people will still be swayed by irrational rhetoric that seeks to group and separate people. The goal of a secularist shouldn't be to eliminate religion, it should be to eliminate the us vs. them attitude that all large scale violence is contingent upon. Here's why your views make me uneasy, they promote that mentality. In my opinion your views, carried to their logical conclusion wouldn't do anything to quell violence in the long term, they would simply substitute groups of atheists chanting anti-religious slogans for Islamists chanting anti-western slogans.
On the subject of heckling, I'm afraid you've misunderstood me, at least in part. The reason that any movement is successful is that, at least in its founding stages, it gathers in private where the members participation reinforces the speakers message. If a heckler disrupts a private gathering he will be asked (or forced) to leave. During these private gatherings the virulent speeches and the congregation's tacit acceptance has phenomenal recruiting power. It goes back to what I said earlier about how humans, as social animals, have a great ability to turn off all reason. A successful group will not endanger itself by staging poorly planned public events where hecklers can disrupt the message. These groups gain members not by massive public demonstrations, but rather by individual private recruiting. Even if a group does hold public gathering, hecklers will tend to increase the us vs. them mentality, and thus the groups solidarity, and may even win the group more recruits.
As an aside, heckling may be successful against poorly planned or executed gatherings like the KKK's of late, but it could never be successful against a better organized group. Heckling isn't what caused the KKK's membership to plummet from it's heyday, it was changing social views. That is precisely why secularists shouldn't seek to create their own group to do battle with the religious groups. Secularists should seek to change the game, reject us vs. themism, and soften the borders. To the extent that secularism has been successful it has been because it is a movement, not a group. There is no reason someone can't be both a secularist and religious. In fact, those people are secularisms greatest strength. Their creed is tolerance, not some metaphysical mumbo-jumbo like Christianity or Atheism.
Science will never "defeat" religion, and it shouldn't seek to. Science is fundamentally unable to answer the metaphysical questions that religion seeks to address. It shouldn't matter what conclusions your metaphysical views cause you to draw, whether nihilistic or messianic, so long as you are tolerant of others.
Personally I don't think religion is dangerous. Far from it. However, some religious people are undoubtedly dangerous. Plenty of non-religious people are equally dangerous.
I think condemnation of religion is prosecuting a perceived cause, and wholly failing to get to the actual root problem. In my opinion, the root cause of violence is always socio-economic. Sometimes religion is a convenient pretext to move the masses in your direction. Sometimes race or tribal groups proves more advantageous. Look at Kenya, Sudan, and Rwanda.
I also think that heckling (what you seem to propose) is a dangerous way of discrediting others. It's disrespectful and intolerant, and therefore prone to backfire. Virulent speeches might have good recruiting power, but public condemnation of others is only effective when it is reinforced daily by friends, not some when applied sporadically by some anonymous nut job in a crowd. The only way anyone's mind really gets changed is through civil discourse.
Yes, there is danger in religious literalism, but the answer isn't banning religion, it's recognizing the social and historical framework in which religious works were written. Look, I can quote Shakespeare and Dostoevsky to fuel anti-Zionist sentiment just as easily as the Koran. If someone chooses to believe that their book is inspired by god, who am I to disagree? It's when people claim that their (translated) book is the absolute, unalterable, and uninterpreted word of god that I get a little uneasy. Literature, any literature, contains nuance and if taken in a vacuum it will lead to conclusions not intended by the author.
Muhammad condemned the infidels, and on its face that may seem damning. However, taken in context, he was actually condemning a very specific group of tribal Arab polytheists who had waged war specifically against him. The Old Testament is full of fire and brimstone. The Hebrews were a conquering band, and their religious writings reflect that reality. The danger arises when one separates a verse from context and history and applies it generally.
Fundamentally, religion is a mystical experience. The mystics of any tradition almost universally tend to be non-violent. The people we need to watch out for are not the people who attempt to bring themselves closer to god, but rather the proselytizers who believe that their own world view should be thrust upon their neighbors. It matters not whether these proselytizers are Muslim, Christian, Hindu, or Atheist. When someone tells me that their beliefs are the only right ones, I take pause.
The fundamental problem with these arguments is that secularism and prosecution of people you disagree with are diametrically opposed.
The secularist is perfectly free to say that religion is dangerous, and no one should be religious. The second he adds, "and we should do something about it," he ceases being a secularist and becomes an extremist himself.
If religious extremists are threating violence you have cause for action. If you act against religious people because you don't like what they believe you are a hypocrite.
It should also be noted that you simply cannot move against religion without simultaneously moving against freedom of speech and assembly. It seems to me that your idea of a secular society is pragmatically similar to Islamic sharia, in the same way that fascist Germany was pragmatically similar to communist Russia.
If we're going to throw around fallacies, you can reject the source, but in doing so you don't discredit his conclusion. To reject his conclusion because there is a fallacy in it is the fallacy fallacy.
For example, If I were to say, "Your an idiot, everyone knows libertarian policies are asinine. Especially that fair tax thing. Don't you know that sales taxes are regressive? Any attempt to make a sales tax not regressive would leave so many loop-holes that you could drive a fleet of hummers through them. Now don't get me started on what a libertarian would do to the environment."
You can't dismiss my conclusion because I called you names, you actually have to address the argument.
P.S you're probably not an idiot - colorful language added to emphasize my point.
It's a problem waiting to happen again. Currently pollsters don't call cell phones. I, and many other young people don't own land-lines.
I've heard that explanation dozens of times in the media, most notably from John Zogby. While that could account a portion of the shift you can't possibly believe it is the main reason Obama's 10 point lead evaporated?
I'm more inclined to believe it had to do with Clinton getting so much news on Sunday and Monday as a result of her moment of emotion. Couple the late news with the fact that many polls stopped polling by Sunday, and the others were reporting 3-day averages, and I think the late deciders account for the discrepancy.
Really? You don't think it'd be leading news on every news outlet in the world if it turned out that the diebold machines borked the election?
Personally, I don't think a recount needs to be done, and I expect it to be a non-issue, but if you've watched CNN lately you'd realize that they are reporting absolutely everything that has anything to do with any of the elections. Even if the recount still proclaims Clinton the victor but shaves a point off her margin of victory it would at least be mentioned in the national media. Also while the media crowned Clinton winner of New Hampshire they're not counting Obama out. Remember this is the same media that declared that Obama was a shoo-in all the way up until the polls closed - so I wouldn't overstate their power.
I think the real story here is how desperately all states need voter-verified paper trails - because a recount without a paper trail is useless.
That's what I thought at first too, but the thing is wealthier Dems are more likely to support Obama, and poorer voters are more likely to support Clinton.
Therefore, if what your positing is true Hillary should have been over represented in the polls, not vice-versa.
I'm not saying that it's impossible voters using electronic voting machines correlated with Clinton supporters, but it does fly in the face of conventional wisdom.
One interesting thing is that apparently all the NH dem primary ballots had the candidates listed in alphabetical order (Clinton first) which is a departure from the standard practice of alternating the order in which the candidates are listed. I've read listing order can cause a swing of up to 3% - so if the ballots were randomized it's a horse-race. That's still not enough to account for the massive 10 point difference in the polls, but it is something to think about.
Brazil has 190,000,000 people. Sweden has 9,000,000.
I tried. For some reason I lose my connection to the FCC after only a few seconds...
While I have no doubt that that is true, I guess that leads me to this question:
Does he really want someone filter every electronic exchange between individuals? A system like YouTube's or MySpace's only works because they are the gatekeeper. Who is the gatekeeper of a torrent, of emule? Look, the p2p software/protocol developers learned their lesson from napster - no central index means no gatekeeper.
And as to the inevitable suggestion that comcast could do this, why in the world should an ISP be any more responsible for the data that travels through it than the USPS?
The point I would like to see Rick Cotton address is how his mythical "workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive" addresses the problem that copy protection only needs to be broken once to show up on the file sharing networks. After that any copy protection only serves to burden the rightful owner.
"Workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive" only stops the casual pirate from uploading their file. It does nothing from stopping the casual pirate from downloading a cracked file that a serious pirate uploaded.
If the content producers are dead set on controlling the flow of their material given the realities of broadband, what they're looking for is digital watermarks, not digital locks. At least in that case you can track down whoever it was that originally purchased the file. No it doesn't work with any content that was ever given away freely (I'm still not sure why you'd want to protect that anyway) and no it isn't perfect. Yes, it is also a bit of closing the barn door after the horses are out, but it at least has some deterrent value.
It depends.
If I simply draw just the ford logo it isn't protected by copyright, as it fails to meet the minimum standards of originality. Specifically, titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs cannot be copyrighted
Now if I draw a picture of a mustang (or Ford produces any concept or product drawings, photos, or brochures) that specific work is copyrighted. That does not mean that I can't copy the logo because it is included in a copyrighted work somewhere (which is what you said).
Trademarks are specifically not covered by copyright. I can copy the ford logo deliberately and without permission, directly from their site and reuse it on my site, provided the use of the mark is made in good faith for the purpose of merely describing the goods or services to which the mark relates or to accurately indicate compatibility with another's goods or services.
A giant mirrored bean.