If just losing editing rights is as bad as Nazi prosecution then by comparison other forms of prosecution must be like killing kittens with sledgehammers.
Didn't you know? Scientologists perform a semi-annual rite in which they kill kittens with sledgehammers and then inject their blood with the contents of the kittens' brain stems. I read it on Wikipedia before the Scientologists edited the article to hide these facts.
I haven't read it. Is Didden just "Kelo says this, so we have to agree with Kelo" or does it independently reason about the matter in a bad way? Circuit Courts of Appeal are obliged to apply Supreme Court precedent.
The Circuit Courts of Appeal hear cases on appeal, and I do not believe they have discretion to refuse. But for the Supreme Court, you're right. In order to grant certiorari and hear a case, four of the nine Justices have to vote to hear it. So cases where an overwhelming majority of the court thinks it was decided right based on the petition for certiorari and do not feel that anything more needs to be said on the matter never get heard before the Supreme Court. A case has to be either close or obviously wrong for the Supreme Court to even ask for briefs in it.
For what it's worth, he got the facts wrong in a fundamental way. Very few cases are appealed to the US Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court rarely hears any appeals at all. It does, however, occasionally grant a petition for certiorari to lower courts. So... it's okay that he put up all the right numbers and explains things in a way that people can understand, because he got a word wrong.
While I mostly agree with you, I wouldn't say it was the best show on television. The second season became meandering and pointless, and the only really interesting developments happened in the last few episodes. Not that I could have done better, but the plot was either too convoluted in a contrived way or directionless. Neither one of those is good for keeping your show on the air.
The real question is how long we will have to wait until the return of the Summer Glau Fun Hour.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what this is about. It has nothing to do with the gradual erosion of privacy from government intrusion and the not always gradual steps toward a police state.
Soccer moms drive the most expensive SUV they can get their hands on. They are motivated purely by status and coolness. You're more likely to solve this problem by banning soccer or by having free lower back tattoos for women over 30 than you are by increasing how much it costs for a soccer mom to have her status symbol - she'll just end up with a less fuel-efficient SUV because the one that gets better mileage costs too much.
I was thinking about that on the walk from my parking ramp to my office this morning, in fact. The problem is that "farm use" is too gray an area. For instance, if you live on a farm and your personal vehicle for going to town is a four-wheel-drive pickup or SUV because you frequently need 4WD to get to town due to muddy or snow-covered roads, does that count as farm use or not?
There are currently different fuel taxes for farm-use fuel, by the way. Definitely diesel and I believe gasoline are available to farmers for agricultural use at a lower tax rate than to general consumers. There are stiff penalties for running farm diesel (dyed and tax exempt) on the highway other than for approved purposes. I don't know what all qualifies, though.
Some existing incentives should, in my opinion, just be furthered. Carpool lane availability in major cities, parking for compact cars, and the like are all less forceful ways of improving the overall transportation efficiency of our nation without punishing farmers who already have a hard enough time staying in business, and/or forcing up the cost of staple foods for all.
There are many possible solutions to the problem. The key is narrowing down the choices to those that do not create or exacerbate other problems to such an extent that the net change is for the worse. People who ignore the negative parts of their pet solutions should not be trusted.
The food and air quality are better in Europe as a whole over the United States as a whole, or are you comparing major cities to major cities? The latter is probably a fair comparison, but the former likely is not. There's a lot more to the USA than the smog capitals of Houston and Los Angeles. Fortunately!
I certainly do understand externalities and the purpose of forcing people to internalize them, but he's talking about punishing people with legitimate needs for larger vehicles. Farmers, for instance, should not be forced to internalize the cost of soccer moms thinking minivans negate the coolness factor of their tramp stamp tattoos.
Forget rioting. Imagine paying twice as much for staple food products. One of the biggest expenses in farming is fuel.
And just because it doesn't have to be that way (regarding taxes and spending) doesn't mean it ever won't be. We are talking about the same America, aren't we?
I know of no time in American history when a new or increased tax has been used to reduce our national deficit. There are two basic fiscal camps active in American politics. One camp is the "tax and spend" group. The other just spends.
I actually am, although the minority is not that tiny when you consider the climate and type of occupation that that whole rural part of the US gets to deal with every day.
Many people own trucks or SUVs who do not have a real need to own them. But that is not a sufficient reason to punish those of us who do have a legitimate need by making our lives more expensive.
Many (but not nearly all, and probably much less than a majority) have trailers to pull, for work or otherwise. Or they have to go places to get to job sites that require higher clearance and/or four-wheel drive. Or we have recreational activities that need a truck, such as pulling a trailer with ATV's on it. We also help friends out when they need furniture moved.
I've personally done the math and it is more economical for me to own my pickup than it would be to own a car and rent a pickup when I need it or to own both a car and a pickup. However, that latter option is one I will likely go with in the next year or two, as it becomes more economical to me.
One big thing to keep in mind, though, is that Americans in general do not like our government telling us what kind of car to drive. We are also not generally fans of government-generated artificial pricing for anything. Why not, instead of punishing people who choose a vehicle that is convenient to them or that makes them happy, work on making the high-efficiency cars a more economical and more attractive option? Bonus points if you can do that without increasing the national deficit.
Dumbing things down is the use of an analogy that is so over-simplified as to be useless in actually understanding the original concept. So they're not quite the same - dumbing things down is (probably nearly always) making an analogy, but making an analogy is not always dumbing things down. In this context, I meant to refer to making a good analogy, by which the underlying concept can be at least partially understood in its own terms.
The remaining 90% is, of course, making up numbers that will get the point across without regard to truth or reality.
Re:Drupal cannot currently be taken seriously
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The debate between "template languages end up implementing most of PHP anyhow, so just use PHP for your template language" and "you should maintain model and view separation, and using PHP for your template language makes it too tempting and easy to break that separation" will never end. One thing to keep in mind, for both sides, is that PHP is nothing but a template engine that has outgrown its britches. Using it to develop a CMS is bound to end up breaking model/view separation by having templates with business logic in them and business routines with display logic in them. Only developer discipline can really maintain cleanliness in that department. A large, distributed project with many user-contributed modules is guaranteed not to have such discipline on a global scale.
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If just losing editing rights is as bad as Nazi prosecution then by comparison other forms of prosecution must be like killing kittens with sledgehammers.
Didn't you know? Scientologists perform a semi-annual rite in which they kill kittens with sledgehammers and then inject their blood with the contents of the kittens' brain stems. I read it on Wikipedia before the Scientologists edited the article to hide these facts.
Evidently, it was not reported/published by the Second Circuit.
I haven't read it. Is Didden just "Kelo says this, so we have to agree with Kelo" or does it independently reason about the matter in a bad way? Circuit Courts of Appeal are obliged to apply Supreme Court precedent.
The Circuit Courts of Appeal hear cases on appeal, and I do not believe they have discretion to refuse. But for the Supreme Court, you're right. In order to grant certiorari and hear a case, four of the nine Justices have to vote to hear it. So cases where an overwhelming majority of the court thinks it was decided right based on the petition for certiorari and do not feel that anything more needs to be said on the matter never get heard before the Supreme Court. A case has to be either close or obviously wrong for the Supreme Court to even ask for briefs in it.
For what it's worth, he got the facts wrong in a fundamental way. Very few cases are appealed to the US Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court rarely hears any appeals at all. It does, however, occasionally grant a petition for certiorari to lower courts. So ... it's okay that he put up all the right numbers and explains things in a way that people can understand, because he got a word wrong.
take a coupla vicodin with three fingers of rye whiskey I didn't know Dr. House had a slashdot account.
You idiot!
Other notable tools missing from that list: A compiler, assembler, and linker.
Don't listen to one fanboy's attempt to sound deeper than he is. The show, while not fantastic, is worth watching.
While I mostly agree with you, I wouldn't say it was the best show on television. The second season became meandering and pointless, and the only really interesting developments happened in the last few episodes. Not that I could have done better, but the plot was either too convoluted in a contrived way or directionless. Neither one of those is good for keeping your show on the air.
The real question is how long we will have to wait until the return of the Summer Glau Fun Hour.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what this is about. It has nothing to do with the gradual erosion of privacy from government intrusion and the not always gradual steps toward a police state.
Soccer moms drive the most expensive SUV they can get their hands on. They are motivated purely by status and coolness. You're more likely to solve this problem by banning soccer or by having free lower back tattoos for women over 30 than you are by increasing how much it costs for a soccer mom to have her status symbol - she'll just end up with a less fuel-efficient SUV because the one that gets better mileage costs too much.
I was thinking about that on the walk from my parking ramp to my office this morning, in fact. The problem is that "farm use" is too gray an area. For instance, if you live on a farm and your personal vehicle for going to town is a four-wheel-drive pickup or SUV because you frequently need 4WD to get to town due to muddy or snow-covered roads, does that count as farm use or not?
There are currently different fuel taxes for farm-use fuel, by the way. Definitely diesel and I believe gasoline are available to farmers for agricultural use at a lower tax rate than to general consumers. There are stiff penalties for running farm diesel (dyed and tax exempt) on the highway other than for approved purposes. I don't know what all qualifies, though.
Some existing incentives should, in my opinion, just be furthered. Carpool lane availability in major cities, parking for compact cars, and the like are all less forceful ways of improving the overall transportation efficiency of our nation without punishing farmers who already have a hard enough time staying in business, and/or forcing up the cost of staple foods for all.
There are many possible solutions to the problem. The key is narrowing down the choices to those that do not create or exacerbate other problems to such an extent that the net change is for the worse. People who ignore the negative parts of their pet solutions should not be trusted.
The food and air quality are better in Europe as a whole over the United States as a whole, or are you comparing major cities to major cities? The latter is probably a fair comparison, but the former likely is not. There's a lot more to the USA than the smog capitals of Houston and Los Angeles. Fortunately!
I certainly do understand externalities and the purpose of forcing people to internalize them, but he's talking about punishing people with legitimate needs for larger vehicles. Farmers, for instance, should not be forced to internalize the cost of soccer moms thinking minivans negate the coolness factor of their tramp stamp tattoos.
Forget rioting. Imagine paying twice as much for staple food products. One of the biggest expenses in farming is fuel.
And just because it doesn't have to be that way (regarding taxes and spending) doesn't mean it ever won't be. We are talking about the same America, aren't we?
Those who don't study history...
I know of no time in American history when a new or increased tax has been used to reduce our national deficit. There are two basic fiscal camps active in American politics. One camp is the "tax and spend" group. The other just spends.
I actually am, although the minority is not that tiny when you consider the climate and type of occupation that that whole rural part of the US gets to deal with every day.
Many people own trucks or SUVs who do not have a real need to own them. But that is not a sufficient reason to punish those of us who do have a legitimate need by making our lives more expensive.
By "'modern' capitalism", are you referring to socialism or to something else?
Many (but not nearly all, and probably much less than a majority) have trailers to pull, for work or otherwise. Or they have to go places to get to job sites that require higher clearance and/or four-wheel drive. Or we have recreational activities that need a truck, such as pulling a trailer with ATV's on it. We also help friends out when they need furniture moved.
I've personally done the math and it is more economical for me to own my pickup than it would be to own a car and rent a pickup when I need it or to own both a car and a pickup. However, that latter option is one I will likely go with in the next year or two, as it becomes more economical to me.
One big thing to keep in mind, though, is that Americans in general do not like our government telling us what kind of car to drive. We are also not generally fans of government-generated artificial pricing for anything. Why not, instead of punishing people who choose a vehicle that is convenient to them or that makes them happy, work on making the high-efficiency cars a more economical and more attractive option? Bonus points if you can do that without increasing the national deficit.
Maybe the SSD revolution is really driven by the desire to just concede defeat and let everyone call the computer a "hard drive."
And using a Prius to haul equipment or materials or to tow a trailer is equally stupid.
Lest I should ever forget that my audience is a bunch of wise asses. =)
Dumbing things down is the use of an analogy that is so over-simplified as to be useless in actually understanding the original concept. So they're not quite the same - dumbing things down is (probably nearly always) making an analogy, but making an analogy is not always dumbing things down. In this context, I meant to refer to making a good analogy, by which the underlying concept can be at least partially understood in its own terms.
My mustang needs a new muffler. Flatulent beast.
The remaining 90% is, of course, making up numbers that will get the point across without regard to truth or reality.
The debate between "template languages end up implementing most of PHP anyhow, so just use PHP for your template language" and "you should maintain model and view separation, and using PHP for your template language makes it too tempting and easy to break that separation" will never end. One thing to keep in mind, for both sides, is that PHP is nothing but a template engine that has outgrown its britches. Using it to develop a CMS is bound to end up breaking model/view separation by having templates with business logic in them and business routines with display logic in them. Only developer discipline can really maintain cleanliness in that department. A large, distributed project with many user-contributed modules is guaranteed not to have such discipline on a global scale.