Perhaps someone should tell the poor dear that the blueprints of public buildings are most likely part of the public record - it doesn't take a genius to go down to city hall and ask to see them.
And if that doesn't work, maybe she should be really scared that anyone in the world can see a great overhead view of her school on Google Maps or Live Maps. Even see it in 3D from the four cardinal points. And if she isn't scared by then, tell her the same thing can be done to her house.
Why, when the only evolutionary advantage human beings have is large and complex brains, do people insist on having children and raising them as idiots?
There really is no reason. Go to the broker of your choice, open an account, and start buying stock in oil, natural gas, coal, wind, solar, and geothermal companies. Do some research to find out what other companies are doing B2B with the first set of companies to provide equipment and such, and invest in them as well. Now, talk to your friends and colleagues and get them to do the same. Wait a year or two, and viola! Diverse energy companies are now yours to choose from. You're welcome.
Of course, you could petition government for more taxes, or the same taxes redistributed differently, or some other application of force by government, to rid the world of oil, coal, and other "things that burn" in favor of wind, solar, and geothermal. But that wouldn't make sense, would it?
This is, after all, how public opinion is formed, by listening to our peers, the news, and other sources and making up our own minds.
Oh, and you were so close to the truth... It was that last part that was incorrect. The correct ending is, "...then turn on American Idol and make the pain go away."
Remember folks, democracy is just another word for "dictatorship by 51% or more of your peers".
The interesting thing here to me is the "voluntary compliance" sentence. The U.S. has another major law affecting all citizens that demands voluntary compliance, and gets it 99% of the time - Income Tax.
So if you want to be able to enforce HIPAA, all you need is an IRS-like agency with IRS-like powers and IRS-like reputation - I guarantee you'll get your compliance.
Remember that PC's started as very VERY expensive and very VERY weak pieces of hardware with not much software that retailed for lots of money. Now I've got more computing power in my handheld than I could have had in a desktop machine 20 years ago.
More on topic, how about air travel in the 40's and 50's? Look at the cost and technology at the time, and compare it to modern jet technology. Sure, it started as an affluent method of travel for the "jet-setters", but now, anyone can travel by air from LA to NYC for less than $500.
Give commercial space travel it's start, and see where it leads us in the next 20-50 years. For something of this scope, nature, and magnitude, you have to have patience.
Would using Jerry's name to criticize him fall under fair use/free speech?
Nope - Larry Flynt was already accused, tried, and acquitted of doing just that in Hustler magazine decades ago. I'll leave the search for the parody he did up to the reader...
TANSTAAFL, my northern friend. (google it for a definition).
And the cost of all this free healthcare and government service? Just a moderate, progressive, socially acceptable 50-75% tax rate. Oh, yeah, and artificially jacked up prices on cigarettes. Compared to that, learning French is child's play.
Anarchism is a very specifical political ideology that shares something with marxism
Funny, my definition of anarchism is slightly different, and may be based on a dictionary denotation rather than an historical connotation. Anarchism, in my definition, is the absence of government control, period. No government. It's Adam Smith (classical) liberalism taken to the logical conclusion, libertarianism at it's purest, and the worst thing to happen to a Marxist since the founding of the New York Stock Exchange.
While I disagree with your definition, I do agree, that the media connotation of the word "anarchist" is completely wrong, inflammatory, irresponsible, and poor journalism.
You know, I had completely forgotten about Saleen Mustangs, Yenko Camaros, Shelby, Roush, etc. I guess the two catches here are a) proper attribution, and b) manufacturer buyoff.
It should be about keeping weapons off planes, not terrorists.
Yeah, sure, keeping weapons off planes certainly helped. Guns haven't been allowed on airplanes for decades - sure glad that policy helped stop a couple of terrorists from taking over four planes on 9/11.
Seriously, the system we have in place now is the same as the one that was in place on 9/10, just more of it and more intrusive. It didn't work on 9/11, and the thinking that more of it will work better is simply insane. The system we have is broken beyond a repair and doesn't need to be improved, patched, fixed, or added on to - it needs to be dismantled and replaced with something new and different, or maybe something old and effective that the socialists -- oops, I meant Democrats and Republicans -- have forgotten about called the right to bear arms.
Before 1968, carrying weapons on airplanes was OK. After the Gun Control Act of 1968, the victim disarmament crowd has slowly but surely turned gun ownership into a crime, or at least suspiscion of a crime in progress.
The airlines are concerned about their passengers and their assets (i.e. the planes), and I realize hand gun bullets can pierce the skin of a pressurized aircraft. There's an answer to that as well, called frangible ammunition. Frangible rounds have a pre-fragmented slug in them - the pieces carry a fraction of the energy of the whole slug, cannot pierce aircraft skin, but can still drop a target at ranges effective in an aircraft. If I were allowed to carry a handgun on board an aircraft, I would have no problem if the airline wanted to inspect my ammo to ensure it was frangible - it would be part of the contract I enter into by purchasing a ticket on their craft.
Now you tell me, where do you feel safer - in a room filled with a couple a' hundred unarmed victims and two-three whacko's with box cutters, or a room filled with a couple a' hundred armed citizens and a two-three armed whackos? Even if the room is a pressurized tube at 35,000 feet, I'd feel better knowing I outnumbered and outgunned the whackos.
OK, but think about this - if this challenge on disability grounds is successful, what effect does that have on other software development? Odeon's website can be classified as an application that runs on the platform of "Internet Explorer on MS Windows". This can set a precedent that anyone who writes an application on a platform that does not provide proper access to the disabled is in violation of the law, and provide for lawsuits forcing an application writer to provide the same application on a platform that is acceptable to the disabled.
So what happens if someone with a disability can't use your Linux based app? You may have to write it to run under Windows as well. Vice versa works as well - maybe your Windows app needs to be ported to Linux, or MacOS, or some other OS that meets the bar.
While I applaud this guy for doing what he needs to make the website usable, his argument citing the UK version of the Disabilities Act chills me.
Am I reading this right? Someone authors a website specifically designed for IE, and that causes a hardship for people who don't use IE on Windows. Ergo, using Mozilla or another browser on Windows or another OS is now a reconized disability? Are the/.ers here prepared to defend open source software users as having a disability, like blindness or paraplegia?
The PBS runs on a public airwaves for free, the deal being that it broadcasts according to the government's standards.
Wrong - it's viewer supported television. Local PBS station viewers send in money to keep the stations running, In exchange for not running commercials for corporate sponsors every 8 minutes (they do run commercials for their sponsors before and after the shows, but not during). The government doesn't tell them what to show - the local stations just purchase the programs they can afford to buy. This differs from for-profit broadcasters, who have deeper pockets and produce their own shows, using advertisers (and more recently, DVD sales) to foot the bill. PBS is a non-profit corporation, not a government entity (when was the last time the DOJ held a fund-raising marathon?).
There's another point no one seems to be touching on here, not that Dreyfuss and Gang can't use real language on a TV show about real people, but that the FCC hasn't adequately defined what they can and cannot do on the public airwaves. They've said they'll enforce a standard rigidly, but then completely failed to define that standard objectively in a way broadcasters can understand. That opens the door to knee-jerk reactionary and politically based interpretations of what can and cannot be broadcast, which is what we see happening today.
However, I don't think the FCC can practically define that standard (I don't know if they can legally do it or not either). As mentioned in another post, there is no federal standard for decency. Different localities define what is decent and what is not, and in cases of obscenity, aren't defined rigidly at all, but use the "reasonable person" approach to interpretation. The FCC guidelines, to be effective, would have to cater to the most conservative estimates of what a "reasonable person" would think, then codify that. The Supreme Court couldn't codify it in the 70's - why do we think the FCC can or should?
I think everyone's missing a key point here. With the cooperation and enforcement from member nations, the UN can and does usurp sovereign power in countries that don't comply. In this case, the UN will be drafting sample legislation for other countries to use - in short, UN delegates (non-elected by any country that I know of) will be drafting bills for other countries to turn into laws. This is standard operating procedure for the UN - draft sample laws to enforce their code of conduct (some call it the "One World Government"), use the weight of diplomacy, brow-beating, sanctions, embargos, and military muscle from other nations to get those laws passed, then stand around and see what a fine, brave, new world they've created. The UN has been doing this for years - normally, Americans only hear about the UN in terms of resolutions our military is dying to enforce.
What happens when a country is in non-compliance? After sanctions, embargos, and brow-beating don't work, the UN turns to it's muscle, basically the U.S. and European nations military, to drop the hammer. Do we really want to send UN "peacekeepers" into a foreign country to stop someone from sending you e-mail? Anyone here want their nation's military to be a) under command of another nation's general, b) shipped to some far away land, and c) used into battles to protect your right to not have to look at naked breasts when you don't want to? Hell, I don't even want my military in Iraq fighting for someone else's freedom.
Remember, folks, the UN is just a meeting place for nations to come together to talk through their differences. UN resolutions have no more weight of law than any other verbal or written contract, and since those contracts are between nations, I posit they carry less enforcement power than contracts between natural persons. The power they have is in PR - non-complying nations get some real bad press from major news organizations, which brings out the bleeding heart in all of us, I'm sure. If these agreements had any real power, Americans wouldn't be getting killed to free Iraq - and it's oil.
If voting made a difference, it would already be illegal.
What we need isn't to get people to vote, we need a way to differentiate between people who don't vote because they're lazy, and people who don't vote because they don't like the choices. Add a "None of the above are acceptable" choice to every office up for grabs, and I'll bet you'll see the 75% voter apathy drop to 25%, and twice as many votes for "None of the above" as for the other candidates combined.
Big Pun is not an example of how NOT to speak. It is more an example of how TO speak
IMHO, Big Pun is an example of the fractionalization of the American culture. With businesses, government agencies, and schools trying to promote homogenization and equality for all, culturally we're breaking into distinct groups with very little cross-over and intermingling. The fact that it continues to happen despite the efforts of teachers and government leaders tells me either a) this is nromal natural process (like tides) that can't be stopped, or b) it's an unnatural process that is more powerful than the people who want to stop it.
Point. But you do realize there were freed blacks in the U.S. prior to 1860 (Frederick Douglas comes to mind), and that even though they were free, they were still third-class citizens, even in the North? That some Northern states passed laws outlawing black immigration into their states? That even after slavery was ended (by the 14th Amendment, not the Emancipation Proclamation), they weren't allowed to serve on juries, defend themselves against criminal accusations, or vote in many cases, even in the Northern states?
I agree, the freedom in the country prior to 1860 is sullied by the presence of slavery, but it's absence didn't improve freedom for everyone. The fact that Lincoln started a war and his Republican party (the "Party of Lincoln" they called themselves) raped the South under the guise of Reconstruction did more to hamper the causes of freedom for whites and blacks in the U.S. than ending slavery helped it. Slavery could have been ended peacefully (as it was in a dozen other countries at the time) and in such a way as to increase freedom rather than as an excuse to curtail it later.
Supreme Court ruled against First Amendment recently with the campaign finance reform act. It was also abandoned during the Civil War and has been severely curtailed by various government agencies.
Second Amendment's been under fire since the 1930's.
Fourth and Sixth Amendments are pre-empted by the Patriot Act, and the Fourth is ignored when boarding an airplane.
Parts of the Fifth Amendment means nothing in tax court, other parts are ignored in the War on Drugs, and still another part has been ruled against by the Supreme Court recently.
Ninth and Tenth Amendments were abandoned and ignored by the Lincoln administration and haven't been the same since.
In short, while I agree these amendments do provide privacy protections, they're so riddled with moth holes from disuse and abuse they're pretty much worthless, and that's a tragedy.
The Bill of Rights - Void Where Prohibited By Law.
For business use, you would rather use something that is a juicy target to those that can and will disrupt your business instead of something that is less of a target and simply requires a little administration that can be outsourced, "consulted", automated, etc?
So I can't outsource my Windows support? I can't hire Windows consultants? If I'm running a business, I'm not looking at what's working now, I'm looking 5, 10, 15 years down to road at what's going to work then. If I see Linux becoming popular enough to draw the attention of attackers, then I'm going to try to prepare for it as best I can.
Using Fedora Core, I even get a little flashing icon that tells me these updates are available. My copy of Windows XP Pro hasn't had a "critical update" from MS in quite a while and I manually check Windows Update at least once a week.
I've got a Redhat 9 system at home, and I see the little flashing icon every now and then as well. I've also got a few Windows machines, and I see update warnings on them as well - once a month, right on the schedule MS sets for them.
Now tell me, would you trust MS more if they ame out with more patches on an irregular schedule, as Linux seems to do, or if they sent them out like clockwork on a rigid schedule? If I'm a Windows network admin with a couple'a hundred or thousand machines to update, I'd rather plan for it on a schedule than get randomized every few days by the latest publickly announced vulnerability to hit the net.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps someone should tell the poor dear that the blueprints of public buildings are most likely part of the public record - it doesn't take a genius to go down to city hall and ask to see them.
And if that doesn't work, maybe she should be really scared that anyone in the world can see a great overhead view of her school on Google Maps or Live Maps. Even see it in 3D from the four cardinal points. And if she isn't scared by then, tell her the same thing can be done to her house.
Why, when the only evolutionary advantage human beings have is large and complex brains, do people insist on having children and raising them as idiots?
There really is no reason. Go to the broker of your choice, open an account, and start buying stock in oil, natural gas, coal, wind, solar, and geothermal companies. Do some research to find out what other companies are doing B2B with the first set of companies to provide equipment and such, and invest in them as well. Now, talk to your friends and colleagues and get them to do the same. Wait a year or two, and viola! Diverse energy companies are now yours to choose from. You're welcome.
Of course, you could petition government for more taxes, or the same taxes redistributed differently, or some other application of force by government, to rid the world of oil, coal, and other "things that burn" in favor of wind, solar, and geothermal. But that wouldn't make sense, would it?
Oh, and you were so close to the truth... It was that last part that was incorrect. The correct ending is, "...then turn on American Idol and make the pain go away."
Remember folks, democracy is just another word for "dictatorship by 51% or more of your peers".
The interesting thing here to me is the "voluntary compliance" sentence. The U.S. has another major law affecting all citizens that demands voluntary compliance, and gets it 99% of the time - Income Tax.
So if you want to be able to enforce HIPAA, all you need is an IRS-like agency with IRS-like powers and IRS-like reputation - I guarantee you'll get your compliance.
--Jon
Remember that PC's started as very VERY expensive and very VERY weak pieces of hardware with not much software that retailed for lots of money. Now I've got more computing power in my handheld than I could have had in a desktop machine 20 years ago.
More on topic, how about air travel in the 40's and 50's? Look at the cost and technology at the time, and compare it to modern jet technology. Sure, it started as an affluent method of travel for the "jet-setters", but now, anyone can travel by air from LA to NYC for less than $500.
Give commercial space travel it's start, and see where it leads us in the next 20-50 years. For something of this scope, nature, and magnitude, you have to have patience.
Nope - Larry Flynt was already accused, tried, and acquitted of doing just that in Hustler magazine decades ago. I'll leave the search for the parody he did up to the reader...
Sounds like a Dilbery cartoon:
PHB: We're awarding $10 for every bug you find and fix.
Dilbert: Where you going Larry?
Larry: I'm going to code myself a new Porsche.
And the cost of all this free healthcare and government service? Just a moderate, progressive, socially acceptable 50-75% tax rate. Oh, yeah, and artificially jacked up prices on cigarettes. Compared to that, learning French is child's play.
Funny, my definition of anarchism is slightly different, and may be based on a dictionary denotation rather than an historical connotation. Anarchism, in my definition, is the absence of government control, period. No government. It's Adam Smith (classical) liberalism taken to the logical conclusion, libertarianism at it's purest, and the worst thing to happen to a Marxist since the founding of the New York Stock Exchange.
While I disagree with your definition, I do agree, that the media connotation of the word "anarchist" is completely wrong, inflammatory, irresponsible, and poor journalism.
You know, I had completely forgotten about Saleen Mustangs, Yenko Camaros, Shelby, Roush, etc. I guess the two catches here are a) proper attribution, and b) manufacturer buyoff.
I think the better anology here is, would Ford sue you for removing the rev limiter from your Focus, then selling it as the SmithCo Focus XZ?
One other minor point - does anyone think that a UK High Court ruling is going to put an end to Playstation game piracy?
As long as they don't convert them to vanilla ice, I'm good with that...
Yeah, sure, keeping weapons off planes certainly helped. Guns haven't been allowed on airplanes for decades - sure glad that policy helped stop a couple of terrorists from taking over four planes on 9/11.
Seriously, the system we have in place now is the same as the one that was in place on 9/10, just more of it and more intrusive. It didn't work on 9/11, and the thinking that more of it will work better is simply insane. The system we have is broken beyond a repair and doesn't need to be improved, patched, fixed, or added on to - it needs to be dismantled and replaced with something new and different, or maybe something old and effective that the socialists -- oops, I meant Democrats and Republicans -- have forgotten about called the right to bear arms.
Before 1968, carrying weapons on airplanes was OK. After the Gun Control Act of 1968, the victim disarmament crowd has slowly but surely turned gun ownership into a crime, or at least suspiscion of a crime in progress.
The airlines are concerned about their passengers and their assets (i.e. the planes), and I realize hand gun bullets can pierce the skin of a pressurized aircraft. There's an answer to that as well, called frangible ammunition. Frangible rounds have a pre-fragmented slug in them - the pieces carry a fraction of the energy of the whole slug, cannot pierce aircraft skin, but can still drop a target at ranges effective in an aircraft. If I were allowed to carry a handgun on board an aircraft, I would have no problem if the airline wanted to inspect my ammo to ensure it was frangible - it would be part of the contract I enter into by purchasing a ticket on their craft.
Now you tell me, where do you feel safer - in a room filled with a couple a' hundred unarmed victims and two-three whacko's with box cutters, or a room filled with a couple a' hundred armed citizens and a two-three armed whackos? Even if the room is a pressurized tube at 35,000 feet, I'd feel better knowing I outnumbered and outgunned the whackos.
So what happens if someone with a disability can't use your Linux based app? You may have to write it to run under Windows as well. Vice versa works as well - maybe your Windows app needs to be ported to Linux, or MacOS, or some other OS that meets the bar.
While I applaud this guy for doing what he needs to make the website usable, his argument citing the UK version of the Disabilities Act chills me.
Wrong - it's viewer supported television. Local PBS station viewers send in money to keep the stations running, In exchange for not running commercials for corporate sponsors every 8 minutes (they do run commercials for their sponsors before and after the shows, but not during). The government doesn't tell them what to show - the local stations just purchase the programs they can afford to buy. This differs from for-profit broadcasters, who have deeper pockets and produce their own shows, using advertisers (and more recently, DVD sales) to foot the bill. PBS is a non-profit corporation, not a government entity (when was the last time the DOJ held a fund-raising marathon?).
There's another point no one seems to be touching on here, not that Dreyfuss and Gang can't use real language on a TV show about real people, but that the FCC hasn't adequately defined what they can and cannot do on the public airwaves. They've said they'll enforce a standard rigidly, but then completely failed to define that standard objectively in a way broadcasters can understand. That opens the door to knee-jerk reactionary and politically based interpretations of what can and cannot be broadcast, which is what we see happening today.
However, I don't think the FCC can practically define that standard (I don't know if they can legally do it or not either). As mentioned in another post, there is no federal standard for decency. Different localities define what is decent and what is not, and in cases of obscenity, aren't defined rigidly at all, but use the "reasonable person" approach to interpretation. The FCC guidelines, to be effective, would have to cater to the most conservative estimates of what a "reasonable person" would think, then codify that. The Supreme Court couldn't codify it in the 70's - why do we think the FCC can or should?
The spelling errors and grammar problems means they're not using Outlook to send mail...
What happens when a country is in non-compliance? After sanctions, embargos, and brow-beating don't work, the UN turns to it's muscle, basically the U.S. and European nations military, to drop the hammer. Do we really want to send UN "peacekeepers" into a foreign country to stop someone from sending you e-mail? Anyone here want their nation's military to be a) under command of another nation's general, b) shipped to some far away land, and c) used into battles to protect your right to not have to look at naked breasts when you don't want to? Hell, I don't even want my military in Iraq fighting for someone else's freedom.
Remember, folks, the UN is just a meeting place for nations to come together to talk through their differences. UN resolutions have no more weight of law than any other verbal or written contract, and since those contracts are between nations, I posit they carry less enforcement power than contracts between natural persons. The power they have is in PR - non-complying nations get some real bad press from major news organizations, which brings out the bleeding heart in all of us, I'm sure. If these agreements had any real power, Americans wouldn't be getting killed to free Iraq - and it's oil.
What we need isn't to get people to vote, we need a way to differentiate between people who don't vote because they're lazy, and people who don't vote because they don't like the choices. Add a "None of the above are acceptable" choice to every office up for grabs, and I'll bet you'll see the 75% voter apathy drop to 25%, and twice as many votes for "None of the above" as for the other candidates combined.
And the second would be oppressive regulation followed by incarceration without access to legal representation on a military base in Cuba.
IMHO, Big Pun is an example of the fractionalization of the American culture. With businesses, government agencies, and schools trying to promote homogenization and equality for all, culturally we're breaking into distinct groups with very little cross-over and intermingling. The fact that it continues to happen despite the efforts of teachers and government leaders tells me either a) this is nromal natural process (like tides) that can't be stopped, or b) it's an unnatural process that is more powerful than the people who want to stop it.
I'm not a sociologist, but I've seen them on TV.
I agree, the freedom in the country prior to 1860 is sullied by the presence of slavery, but it's absence didn't improve freedom for everyone. The fact that Lincoln started a war and his Republican party (the "Party of Lincoln" they called themselves) raped the South under the guise of Reconstruction did more to hamper the causes of freedom for whites and blacks in the U.S. than ending slavery helped it. Slavery could have been ended peacefully (as it was in a dozen other countries at the time) and in such a way as to increase freedom rather than as an excuse to curtail it later.
Problem here is:
Supreme Court ruled against First Amendment recently with the campaign finance reform act. It was also abandoned during the Civil War and has been severely curtailed by various government agencies.
Second Amendment's been under fire since the 1930's.
Fourth and Sixth Amendments are pre-empted by the Patriot Act, and the Fourth is ignored when boarding an airplane.
Parts of the Fifth Amendment means nothing in tax court, other parts are ignored in the War on Drugs, and still another part has been ruled against by the Supreme Court recently.
Ninth and Tenth Amendments were abandoned and ignored by the Lincoln administration and haven't been the same since.
In short, while I agree these amendments do provide privacy protections, they're so riddled with moth holes from disuse and abuse they're pretty much worthless, and that's a tragedy.
The Bill of Rights - Void Where Prohibited By Law.
Don't forget the period from 1789 until around 1860, when it was also the land of the free. Since then, it has been the land of less and less free...
So I can't outsource my Windows support? I can't hire Windows consultants? If I'm running a business, I'm not looking at what's working now, I'm looking 5, 10, 15 years down to road at what's going to work then. If I see Linux becoming popular enough to draw the attention of attackers, then I'm going to try to prepare for it as best I can.
Using Fedora Core, I even get a little flashing icon that tells me these updates are available. My copy of Windows XP Pro hasn't had a "critical update" from MS in quite a while and I manually check Windows Update at least once a week.
I've got a Redhat 9 system at home, and I see the little flashing icon every now and then as well. I've also got a few Windows machines, and I see update warnings on them as well - once a month, right on the schedule MS sets for them.
Now tell me, would you trust MS more if they ame out with more patches on an irregular schedule, as Linux seems to do, or if they sent them out like clockwork on a rigid schedule? If I'm a Windows network admin with a couple'a hundred or thousand machines to update, I'd rather plan for it on a schedule than get randomized every few days by the latest publickly announced vulnerability to hit the net.