I'm a little less libertarian than you and I see some potential problems. I don't really have many problems with this being regulated, but I'm a bit uncertain that the FDA is the best agency for this. I typically think that regulation is very similar to encryption. Both can make you much safer if done well, but they aren't done well very often (especially regulation) and end up just being a big inconvenience. Unlike many I genuinely believe that regulation can and should be done properly, which means it should be done by the right department and it should be very clear who regulates what. As regulatory agencies go, the FDA isn't horrid, but it seems like an odd choice to regulate a hospital's wireless network.
The DF Eternal Suggestion thread is an excellent model. It's not actually a forum thread though. It's a quick and dirty custom webpage that contains all/most of the suggestions that are made and is updated with new ones frequently. The great part is that each registered user is only allowed to vote for the 3 they feel are most important, although they can change those at any time. It becomes not just a decision of whether a suggestion is good or bad, but whether it's important enough to spend one of my votes on. It could certainly be manipulated by registering multiple accounts if you really wanted too and I think there may be a few items still on it that actually have been implemented, but for the most part it works extremely well.
Passwords may be the weakest link, but they are not the most common attack vector because what they are protecting is of minimal worth. The most common attack vector is exactly what we have seen here: someone uses CSS/default password/other vulnerability and grabs the whole database. It's certainly sensible to keep good passwords on e-mail and financial accounts, but even there I'm much more worried about the backend being hacked than someone trying to brute force my password.
There are no actual limitations on what Congress can spend money on so long as that spending does not violate someone else's rights. If congress wants to buy up all the land in Nebraska and build a build a giant day-spa for themselves it is perfectly legal so long as they negotiate fairly with the landowners and have it built to the recommended codes and follow govt purchasing requirements.
Similarly there is very little constitutional limits on what the government may tax to raise money, and the entire tax code is clearly more about influencing behavior than it is about raising money. What the law actually does is add a tax that is negated if you have insurance. I really just see this as one more tax deduction, just like interest on my mortgage, which is a deduction because the Federal Government whats to encourage homeownership - is that constitutional or not?
The limits that are in the constitution are much more about what the government can regulate (or pass laws regarding) than they are about what it can spend money on or how it can raise money. This law isn't likely to be attacked on those grounds because most of those portions of the bill are wildly popular. I do tend to think they've gotten a bit carried away in interpreting the commerce clause lately, but I think insurance is reasonably in that category. If nothing else I do expect my insurance to cover me when I'm out of state, which does land pretty cleanly into inter-state commerce.
I won't dispute that debt collection is necessary, but I will dispute that it's just a matter of people living beyond their means.
The majority (roughly 60% according to Google) of bankruptcy are due to medical bills, which are not voluntarily incurred and are usually by people with insurance.
Another factor that is causing major problems right now is that peoples "means" are frequently taking sudden and severe drops. Someone making $50K and living on $40K is generally doing great, but even they won't last long when their income suddenly drops to $20K.
If that's true it does completely change things and this is actually a reasonably clever judge doing things right. I don't see anything in the article about the lawsuit against the parents though. Do you have a citation for that?
Asthma may work slightly differently than allergies, but I believe the root cause of both is the immune system triggering an excessive response. Your immune system is separate from your lungs so your asthma would not necessarily be transmitted to a donor. Some of your immune system's B-Cells and T-cells would transfer over though, and as this case demonstrates it is possible for them to cause some changes to a host immune system. It's rather uncommon and should only happen in unusual circumstances.
The article actually explained all this pretty well.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Bible makes it clear that everything is predestined or even that God knows the future in it's entirety. It is in many ways the most sensible option, but check wikipedia's Open Theism article to see a different approach. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I also don't think it's completely idiotic.
The simplest presentation of it would be that God knows everything that exists to be known, but the future does not exist in a knowable fashion, therefore God does not know it, but can predict it with high precision and can accomplish anything he desires.
Some open theists try to use it to get around the condemning humanity to hell problem you mentioned, that doesn't really hold water to me.
It's reasonably common in several pro-sports and especially in footwear. Professional ice-skaters and hockey players will certainly have injection mold based skates, and I'm guessing many athletes even get custom molded shoes.
It's important to realize that there are at least 3 very different conceptions of what a gun is in and what it is for in the US. Those being rural, urban and military. In rural areas the word gun generally means shotgun and they largely can't conceive of it as something you shoot a person with. For a farmer their shotgun is mostly just another tool and has more in common with a rake than it does a knife. In urban areas the word gun means a handgun and is definitely something you shoot another person with. It is generally used to commit a crime or for self defense. In the military gun generally means military assault rifle and is again very much for killing another person. Hunters are a viable 4th group, since they are usually urban/suburbanites who travel to rural areas to hunt (or just drink as someone else posted). Many genuine farmers aren't actually into hunting and just find hunters to be a nuisance.
It's interesting how the groups all interact around "gun rights". My dad (who does hunt) provided the following simple explanation: The problem with the NRA is that it has a Field and Stream membership and a Soldier of Fortune leadership.
This is because you're just a creator and if you sign up with a label you usually sign over the rights and are for the most part no longer the "Rights Holder". They are using intentionally deceptive language to make us think they are helping the creators when they really aren't. In the US this would basically extrapolate to "Rights Holders... which are incredibly large and massively companies who donate lots of cash to political campaigns which was not matched by the cash contributed by ISPs." I was under the impression that political campaigns ran a bit differently over there and are slightly less reliant on corporate donations, but it appears I may be mistaken.
You really don't hang out in any computer gaming related forums do you? Both of my primary online hang-outs have had busy Minecraft threads for about 3 months now and both of them are running multiplayer servers and have channels created for it in their voice-chat programs of choice. Several friends have also posted about it on facebook.
Have the dozens of people saying crap like this even read the article? It's not a discipline issue, it's a simple maturity issue. No amount of discipline will make a 5 year old as mature as a 6 year old. They are only out-of-control compared to a different aged student.
I'm not so sure about that. Controlling access to the front page is powerful. Once something makes the front page the general liberal leaning populace takes over and it will generally appear in the sidebars as well if it's of interest.
It should also be mentioned that digg has been piloting a random approch for quite a while. It will occasionally display a box above the article list asking you to read and vote on an article. If it gets enough votes it goes to the front page. The biggest problem with it is that there is a timer on it. I probably see them twice a week or so, and I'm there frequently.
From a leftist position Obama's problem is that he actually starts negotiations from the middle. For example, any form of single payer healthcare reform wasn't even proposed, he started Health Care Reform from a very centrist proposal, same thing for the financial stimulus.
You're a bit behind the times there. Shouts have been gone for almost a year and a half. The Digg Patriots apparently organized themselves shortly thereafter because they lost this tool. Also note that while you can see anything your friends have dugg, there is no way to see what they have buried.
As far as I'm concerned MS made the best pointing device ever designed, the Trackball Explorer. Then again, they don't make it anymore. They definitely have the capability. Management usually messes it up royally, but you can't actually rely on that.
We actually have sent manned bathyspheres and ROVs to the bottom of the Challenger deep, so we can get there. Still, while the remoteness might be debatable, it's easily the most dangerous environment human's have ever been to. As for mountain peaks, we've landed helicopters on Everest's peak, so I'd guess we could land one on any other peak if we really need to.
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I'm a little less libertarian than you and I see some potential problems. I don't really have many problems with this being regulated, but I'm a bit uncertain that the FDA is the best agency for this. I typically think that regulation is very similar to encryption. Both can make you much safer if done well, but they aren't done well very often (especially regulation) and end up just being a big inconvenience. Unlike many I genuinely believe that regulation can and should be done properly, which means it should be done by the right department and it should be very clear who regulates what. As regulatory agencies go, the FDA isn't horrid, but it seems like an odd choice to regulate a hospital's wireless network.
The DF Eternal Suggestion thread is an excellent model. It's not actually a forum thread though. It's a quick and dirty custom webpage that contains all/most of the suggestions that are made and is updated with new ones frequently. The great part is that each registered user is only allowed to vote for the 3 they feel are most important, although they can change those at any time. It becomes not just a decision of whether a suggestion is good or bad, but whether it's important enough to spend one of my votes on. It could certainly be manipulated by registering multiple accounts if you really wanted too and I think there may be a few items still on it that actually have been implemented, but for the most part it works extremely well.
Passwords may be the weakest link, but they are not the most common attack vector because what they are protecting is of minimal worth. The most common attack vector is exactly what we have seen here: someone uses CSS/default password/other vulnerability and grabs the whole database. It's certainly sensible to keep good passwords on e-mail and financial accounts, but even there I'm much more worried about the backend being hacked than someone trying to brute force my password.
There are no actual limitations on what Congress can spend money on so long as that spending does not violate someone else's rights. If congress wants to buy up all the land in Nebraska and build a build a giant day-spa for themselves it is perfectly legal so long as they negotiate fairly with the landowners and have it built to the recommended codes and follow govt purchasing requirements.
Similarly there is very little constitutional limits on what the government may tax to raise money, and the entire tax code is clearly more about influencing behavior than it is about raising money. What the law actually does is add a tax that is negated if you have insurance. I really just see this as one more tax deduction, just like interest on my mortgage, which is a deduction because the Federal Government whats to encourage homeownership - is that constitutional or not?
The limits that are in the constitution are much more about what the government can regulate (or pass laws regarding) than they are about what it can spend money on or how it can raise money. This law isn't likely to be attacked on those grounds because most of those portions of the bill are wildly popular. I do tend to think they've gotten a bit carried away in interpreting the commerce clause lately, but I think insurance is reasonably in that category. If nothing else I do expect my insurance to cover me when I'm out of state, which does land pretty cleanly into inter-state commerce.
Smart countries with better reasons to fear terrorists than us have already thought about that:
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---israelification-high-security-little-bother
(yes, it's been posted by others here as well, but it's worth a read.)
I won't dispute that debt collection is necessary, but I will dispute that it's just a matter of people living beyond their means.
The majority (roughly 60% according to Google) of bankruptcy are due to medical bills, which are not voluntarily incurred and are usually by people with insurance.
Another factor that is causing major problems right now is that peoples "means" are frequently taking sudden and severe drops. Someone making $50K and living on $40K is generally doing great, but even they won't last long when their income suddenly drops to $20K.
If that's true it does completely change things and this is actually a reasonably clever judge doing things right. I don't see anything in the article about the lawsuit against the parents though. Do you have a citation for that?
Have you recently shoved a demonic crystal into your head? It's a known side effect.
Asthma may work slightly differently than allergies, but I believe the root cause of both is the immune system triggering an excessive response. Your immune system is separate from your lungs so your asthma would not necessarily be transmitted to a donor. Some of your immune system's B-Cells and T-cells would transfer over though, and as this case demonstrates it is possible for them to cause some changes to a host immune system. It's rather uncommon and should only happen in unusual circumstances.
The article actually explained all this pretty well.
Of course it's not true, but that's no reason no to try to start a big fire.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Bible makes it clear that everything is predestined or even that God knows the future in it's entirety. It is in many ways the most sensible option, but check wikipedia's Open Theism article to see a different approach. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I also don't think it's completely idiotic.
The simplest presentation of it would be that God knows everything that exists to be known, but the future does not exist in a knowable fashion, therefore God does not know it, but can predict it with high precision and can accomplish anything he desires.
Some open theists try to use it to get around the condemning humanity to hell problem you mentioned, that doesn't really hold water to me.
It's reasonably common in several pro-sports and especially in footwear. Professional ice-skaters and hockey players will certainly have injection mold based skates, and I'm guessing many athletes even get custom molded shoes.
It's important to realize that there are at least 3 very different conceptions of what a gun is in and what it is for in the US. Those being rural, urban and military. In rural areas the word gun generally means shotgun and they largely can't conceive of it as something you shoot a person with. For a farmer their shotgun is mostly just another tool and has more in common with a rake than it does a knife. In urban areas the word gun means a handgun and is definitely something you shoot another person with. It is generally used to commit a crime or for self defense. In the military gun generally means military assault rifle and is again very much for killing another person. Hunters are a viable 4th group, since they are usually urban/suburbanites who travel to rural areas to hunt (or just drink as someone else posted). Many genuine farmers aren't actually into hunting and just find hunters to be a nuisance.
It's interesting how the groups all interact around "gun rights". My dad (who does hunt) provided the following simple explanation: The problem with the NRA is that it has a Field and Stream membership and a Soldier of Fortune leadership.
Much of Obama's proposals have had more liberal versions proposed in the past by Republicans. I'd say that makes him very midlle-right.
Nixon's proposed health care reform was more liberal than what we got.
W. Bush's proposed immigration reforms were more liberal than anything the current Dem's have proposed.
Last year McCain was willing to re-enact Glass-Steagal in response to the financial crisis.
This is because you're just a creator and if you sign up with a label you usually sign over the rights and are for the most part no longer the "Rights Holder". They are using intentionally deceptive language to make us think they are helping the creators when they really aren't. In the US this would basically extrapolate to "Rights Holders... which are incredibly large and massively companies who donate lots of cash to political campaigns which was not matched by the cash contributed by ISPs." I was under the impression that political campaigns ran a bit differently over there and are slightly less reliant on corporate donations, but it appears I may be mistaken.
Master Zynga sounds more like the quirky martial arts mentor. The rest are definitely evil FarmVillains.
You really don't hang out in any computer gaming related forums do you? Both of my primary online hang-outs have had busy Minecraft threads for about 3 months now and both of them are running multiplayer servers and have channels created for it in their voice-chat programs of choice. Several friends have also posted about it on facebook.
There's a big difference between an ISP and a web-host. Rackspace is a web-host.
Have the dozens of people saying crap like this even read the article? It's not a discipline issue, it's a simple maturity issue. No amount of discipline will make a 5 year old as mature as a 6 year old. They are only out-of-control compared to a different aged student.
When it comes to geeky options I believe donating your brain to the Harvard Brain Tissue Center is tops. http://www.brainbank.mclean.org/ Just generally donating your body for research is an excellent option as well. For an entertaining look at what might happen there I recommend the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826/
I'm not so sure about that. Controlling access to the front page is powerful. Once something makes the front page the general liberal leaning populace takes over and it will generally appear in the sidebars as well if it's of interest.
It should also be mentioned that digg has been piloting a random approch for quite a while. It will occasionally display a box above the article list asking you to read and vote on an article. If it gets enough votes it goes to the front page. The biggest problem with it is that there is a timer on it. I probably see them twice a week or so, and I'm there frequently.
From a leftist position Obama's problem is that he actually starts negotiations from the middle. For example, any form of single payer healthcare reform wasn't even proposed, he started Health Care Reform from a very centrist proposal, same thing for the financial stimulus.
You're a bit behind the times there. Shouts have been gone for almost a year and a half. The Digg Patriots apparently organized themselves shortly thereafter because they lost this tool. Also note that while you can see anything your friends have dugg, there is no way to see what they have buried.
As far as I'm concerned MS made the best pointing device ever designed, the Trackball Explorer. Then again, they don't make it anymore. They definitely have the capability. Management usually messes it up royally, but you can't actually rely on that.
We actually have sent manned bathyspheres and ROVs to the bottom of the Challenger deep, so we can get there. Still, while the remoteness might be debatable, it's easily the most dangerous environment human's have ever been to. As for mountain peaks, we've landed helicopters on Everest's peak, so I'd guess we could land one on any other peak if we really need to.
Challenger Deep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_deep#Descents
Everest: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0509/whats_new/helicopter_everest.html