Probably a little late to respond, and this'll probably get modded down pretty quickly, but I can't resist...
Or maybe [the RIAA] are too busy since they just sued a bunch more customers....
The Recording Industry Association of America on Wednesday announced it had sued another 744 individuals and refiled suits against 152 others who had ignored or declined offers to settle.
Huh? I don't follow you. They didn't sue their customers, they sued file swappers. They sued people who steal (oops, sorry, "infringed") their property. File swappers are not RIAA customers. If they'd bought the songs, they wouldn't be downloading them.
If GM helped bust a car-theft ring, would you claim that the car theives are "GM customers?"
Wow, you've got some great shots. Coincidentally, I have a cat that looks very similar to "Magic." Her name is Trinity, and she's also an all-black, short-haired domestic, but she has a small white patch on her chest (just enough to keep her from being a "bad-luck" cat). I liked a lot of your night shots of Parliament, too. Nice work.
And has your ticket price gone down at all since they started showing ads?
Actually, yes, they have. Here in Ottawa, Ontario, all the major chains lowered their ticket prices last year by a couple of bucks, although the prevailing opinion was that the move was made to combat piracy, rather than return advertising dividends to the patrons themselves.
Can you read the document on the LCD screen without going blind or getting severe eye strain?
Good enough, then.
And that, folks, is what's wrong with Open Source.
"I'm happy with it the way it is, so learn to live with the things you don't like, or fix it yourself. But I'll never understand why you like that other, stable, feature-rich garbage app when you have a superior app like this one. Quit complaining."
"you've got to have a very feature-rich application."
No. You need to have a very stable application with a very good plugin architecture.
I don't mean to rain on your parade, but do you really think even 1/100th of Word's target market give's a rat's behind about "a very good plugin architecture?"
Do you really think that the kind of people who will buy Word are the same people who will happily browse Best Buy's rack of "Word Plugins," and buy the Spellchecker Plugin, Grammar Plugin, Japanese Language Plugin, and HTML Export Plugin, without complaining?
Users don't want "plugins." Developers do. So while a good plugin architecture might make sense in an IDE or source-control solution, it is utter overkill for a layperson app like a word processer. People who buy Word (and Money, and Excel, and PowerPoint,...) want it to work right out of the box. They don't want to dick around buying and installing a half-dozen extra plugins. They want to pop in the CD, click "Install," and get to work on their term paper, or writing up Grandma's recipes.
I also am a firm supporter of the 2nd Amendment, and in fact own multiple firearms. Why? Because I believe there may come a time where I need to defend my ideals with violence. Frequently changes can come about through peaceful means, but when peaceful means fail and tyranny rears its ugly head, then blood must be spilled.
I've picked this particular argument apart many times before, but what the heck, I'll take another stab at it here again.
Your reasoning is extremely flawed, and here's why:
1. You will never be able to convince enough people simultaneously that "enough is enough", and a line has been crossed. There will always be differing opinions, and those who believe that we should just wait a little longer, and it will get better. Timothy McVeigh, and the people of Ruby Ridge and Waco all thought that they were rebelling against a corrupt government too, but when they put out the call for help, we all just sat back and watched it on the news. Likewise, if you, or even you and a group of friends, were to take up arms against the government, you'd be completely alone. No one would join you. You'd be unable to organize a rebellion. Heck, if you even attempted to organize such a rebellion, you'd all be labeled as "terrorists."
2. Your puny weapons are no match for the military anyway. The 2nd amendment has long, long since been gutted of its original spirit. If the most right-wing interpretation of the ambiguous amendment is actually correct, and the intent was to guarantee that the citizenry had access to the same firepower as the government, so that in the event of a corrupt regime, the people could overthrow the tyrants, then it was violated long ago. The thinking was that $SAME_WEAPONS * $MORE_PEOPLE = $GUARANTEED_VICTORY. The "people" would outnumber the military, and with the same weapons, victory would be assured.
However, the pathetic firepower that the government permits you to own is no match for the superior weaponry of the 4 levels of the military. Their superior armament, organization, training, and intelligence network would render any attempt at a serious coup a non-starter.
I'm going to say what people don't like to hear, but can't deny: The 2nd Amendment should guarantee us the right to own nukes. There, I said it. If the right-wingers are correct, and the amendment is supposed to give "The People" the same firepower as "The Government," then we should be allowed to own nukes. Aircraft carriers, jets, ICBMs, bio/chem weapons, the whole 9 yards. Either that's what the 2nd Amendment means, or it isn't. Which is it, right-wingers?
I look at my intellectual forbears like
"Intellectual??" How did you come to that conclusion? I would have thought "ideological" would have been a more appropriate word, or even leave off the extraneous adjective altogether. What does intellect have to do with it? They simply shared your beliefs. And for someone who paints himself in the same intellectual class as such famous figures, I think you could have spelled "forbearers" correct.;)
Anyway, to sum up a long-winded rant: The 2nd Amendment should either be interpreted in its true spirit, and USAmericans should therefore be allowed to buy, possess, and test the exact same firepower as their military, or it is an outdated anachronistic relic from an era where no one could possibly have ever forseen weapons of the magnitude we have today (nuclear/chem/bio), and it should be rephrased to more accurately reflect the common, liberal interpretation, or removed completely.
It's a bit shortsighted to assume that Java magically makes bad programmers less risky.
Uhm... but it does. It doesn't make them good coders, of course, but it does substantially limit the damage they can do, compared with C.
I'm reminded of a humourous quote by Bjarne Stroustrup, which was something to the effect of, "C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you'll take your whole leg off."
You may have noted that people trend Liberal when young, and then trend Conservative as they age. The exceptions to these trends merely test them.
That's because as people age they tend to get bitter and jaded about social topics until they really don't give a damn.
No, I don't think that's it. It seems to me that when I discuss social issues with young people, they focus on the emotional, "touchy-feely" aspects of the issues. They see what the suffering and outcomes, but don't really have workable solutions. They say things such as, "Man, like, just imagine if everyone in the country donated a dollar, you'd have like, $300 million, then you could save ALL the whales. They should just raise everybody's taxes a dollar."
The young haven't been part of the system long enough to see the big picture. They don't understand that the economy is, for the most part, a closed system. You can't funnel money into one program without taking it from another, or raising taxes. "So raise taxes," they say, without understanding that doing so would affect inflation, interest rates, housing, welfare, and even crime (the vast majority of crime is committed by poor people). It's a complex balancing act.
But since they can't understand that yet, they by default focus on what they *can* understand, which unfortunately is often overly simplistic, like, "all I know is, that guy doesn't have a home, he's living on the streets, he's done nothing wrong, and we should give him a home." Young people, and liberals in general, tend to have a "gimmie" attitude, where they feel entitled to things. They see that we live in a rich society, and thus feel that they deserve the best healthcare, the best schools, and a good job. The American dream, basically. They want these things, because they see other, older people with them. Note that I said "older."
And that's where we get into the other half of this comparison. Those "older" people who have the retirement savings, the home, the nice car, and the good education are usually conservatives. Conservatives often start out as Liberals, but become disillusioned when they realize that society isn't going to give them the handouts they feel they deserve. So they set to work earning the things they want for themselves, and become bitter at the government for not helping them as much as they feel it should've.
Conservatives then develop the attitude that since they had to work hard for what they've got, then everybody else should have to work hard, too. They feel that people don't deserve free handouts - they should have to work for them. The see the government robbing their paychecks of thousands of dollars every month, and they see the ungrateful benefactors of those taxes complaining that they want even more, and they tend to develop an "us versus them" attitude. By now, they've aged enough to have been paying taxes for quite a few years, and have seen little change. They've seen the real sacrifices they've had to make in order to get the house, the car, the education fund for their kids. They feel like the government hasn't done anything for them financially, and they see all this money being funneled into programs for people who they perceive as lazy, and thus, undeserving.
The aged conservative feels that since he's successful, and has worked hard and sacrificed, then therefore anyone can be successful if they work hard and sacrifice. The corralary, of course, being that all those unsuccessful people he sees out there, benefitting from his tax dollars, must therefore be lazy, and unwilling to sacrifice. He perceives that those poor people (who are usually liberal), are demanding the same things that Mr. Conservative has, but they don't want to work for it.
Neither side is completely justified. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle. But it is certainly interesting to listen to the opinions of a young, naive, liberal student and contrast them with an older, conservative relative.
Just food for thought, not meant as a troll or flamebait.
No, it's an unfair old thing. A lot of countries require warrants before phones can be tapped.
Don't be ignorant. Warrants are required before the phones can be tapped. This article simply says that the requirement that lines can be tapped is being extended to VoIP. This prevents the scenario where a fed walks into the CO with a warrant, says "We have a warrant here that permits us to tap this line. Set it up for us.", and the lab tech responding, "I'm sorry, these switches don't have the 'wiretap' feature."
The law is just saying that all switches (whether landline, wireless, or now, VoIP) must be able to be tapped. Of course, they still need a warrant to actually carry out the tap, but there must be no "un-tappable" lines.
This is really non-news. This is already standard procedure for all phone systems, and has been for decades. The same situation exists with both wireline and wireless phone systems. From practically the very beginning, phone companies were required to provided wiretap services to the authorities. As a former Nortel employee, this was something that we had to include in every single wireless switch that is sold. And no, the government doesn't pay for it. The phone companies (that is to say, the customers) eat the cost, and always have.
The writeup makes it sound like this is some unfair, new thing being lobbed at VoIP. It's not. It's just applying the exact same rules that exist for current system to the new system.
What next? "Government attempts to scuttle VoIP by requiring them to abide by 5 9's reliability and provide 911 service?"
Had to buy CRAP item X. When (not if) it breaks, I buy a new one, swap contents, and return the old one in new packaging. It was "defective".
Uhm, wouldn't it be more ethical to simply patronize companies who produce more durable goods, rather than ripping off the cheaper ones? I mean, if you're trying to make it look like you take the high road, you might actually try taking it.
I wrote a paper about how some of this stuff is impacting the environment not to long ago. I thought I had an idea, ends up the actual numbers are WAY higher than I ever would have thought.
Really? How does it compare to the really nasty chemicals that are involved in developing a film-based photographic process?
How do the results change when you take into account that the technology is re-used over and over and over, whereas film can only be used once?
So which is harder on the environment? Film or digital?
LCDs are manufactured using an resource-intensive process, AFAIK, with large volumes of contanimated water as a waste product, and large volumes of dangerous chemicals being used/reused/disposed in the process.
These cameras are reusable. Sure, there may be some waste during manufacturing, but the fact that the exact same materials can be used for hundreds of photos makes up for it.
Film, on the other hand, uses equally nasty chemicals and byproducts, if not worse, and is a 1-shot deal. You can't "delete" a film photo and take it again - its commited to the silver halide crystals, like it or not. And the stuff they use to turn that film into prints is much, much worse than the ink in a digital printer.
Get your priorities straight, bud. This is good for the environment.
It is definitely possible to make yourself physically sick if you are mentally convinced you are sick.
Here's my quick story to back up what you're saying. You know that hangover feeling, where you feel weak, and you feel like your heart is skipping a beat every now and then. Well, I felt that way after a night of drinking each weekend. I recognized that it was normal. Except that it started getting worse as the weeks wore on. After a night of drinking, I'd wake up with the usual hangover, but that weak, "fluttery" feeling stuck around all day, even into the evening of the day after drinking.
So I cut back on the drinking. But by now, even if I didn't drink at all, the weekend would come, and I'd still get that feeling. I started really feeling weird, like I wasn't sure my heart was even beating (it was). I felt a little nauseous, and started getting cold sweats. I was waking up in the middle of the night, shivering and sweating at the same time. My heart was racing. I didn't know what was wrong with me.
Finally, it got so bad that one night I went to the hospital in the middle of the night. They drew blood, checked my blood pressure and pulse (120 bpm, resting). They said everything looked normal. I went home, tried to get some sleep, and was normal again by morning.
The second time I went to the hospital in the middle of the night, they did the same routine, and suspected maybe an overactive thyroid or something, but said the blood tests looked perfectly normal. I was confused, embarassed, and scared. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I hadn't even told my family what was going on. I just wanted to feel "normal" again.
I met with my family doctor to discuss what was going on and review the results of my tests. She asked me a lot of "soft" questions about stress, money, working too hard, etc. She suggested that I might be suffering from anxiety. I thought it was absurd! I've been through a heckuvalot of stress in the past with no issues at all. I work great under stress, and I didn't have any stress in my life at all at that time anyway, except for this whole "WTF is wrong with me" thing.
Well, it turned out that the whole "WTF is wrong with me thing"was what was causing the anxiety. I had anxiety over having anxiety! I know it sounds weird, but after that meeting with my doctor, I believed her, and it never happened again. I've been "normal" ever since.
I hesitate to say it was "all in my head," because it wasn't. It was rooted in my head, but I was experiencing very real, tangible symptoms. I was "anxious" over figuring out what was wrong with me.
Anyway, just curious if anyone else has had a similar experience.
who has the best doping doctors who get past detection.
Why does everyone insist on viewing doping as a "black-and-white" issue?
The human body is a very complex machine. The chemical reactions that take place in side are very complicated and sensitive. Athletes carefully monitor their nutrition, and supplement their bodies with well-timed servings of synthetic protein, creatine, and other compounds and hormones. Where do you draw the line? Should it be illegal to take protein shakes? What if a competitor eats a huge number of chicken breasts? Or drinks more than the allowable portions of milk?
My point in all this is that there are many things that affect an athlete's ability to perform. You can't just say, "that guy was doping, so he's a cheat. Everyone else passed the doping tests, so they're all honest, supreme athletes." It's not that simple. They're all taking complex coctails of nutrients and supplements. They all take vitamins, energy bars, protein shakes, creatine, testosterone, lactic-acid inhibitors, and who-knows-what else. If one of them accidentally takes just a few too many grams of one of his supplements, he/she could set off the doping alarm, and fail the test. That doesn't mean they deliberately cheated, unless you consider all the other athletes to be "cheating" too, when they follow their artificial diets.
NO ONE competes "naturally" anymore, in the sense that they just eat plain old food, sleep when they feel like it, and then compete. They all have carefully-monitored sleep cycles and diets. They're treated like machines, like high-performance engines. They're groomed to compete, sometimes even to the degree that they're supposed to peak on the day of their competition (that is, if you asked them to re-run their competition the next day, their time wouldn't be anywhere near the time they were able to turn in the day before).
So what's the answer? Ban all supplements? All protein powders? Energy bars? Low-fat foods? Forbid athletes from taking more than 8 hours of sleep a night? Should we try to make sure everyone is on equal footing? Or do we allow them to do everything they can to hone their bodies into high-performance machines that'll break records (and thus, attract ratings, sponsors, and ad revenue)?
Who's to say that a mild steroid is cheating, but a rigorous diet of protein shakes, Myoplex, ephedrine, Xenadrine, selenium, and whatever else is OK?
That's interesting, I hadn't seen the facts and video of the Dudley Hiibel case before. If that is the worst-case the anti-ID crowd could come up with, I'm no impressed. The spin on that page is unbelievable. Take this, for example:
Eleven times Dove demanded Dudley show 'his papers'. Dudley asked a simple question: why?
"Because I'm investigating", said Dove.
"Investigating what?" Dudley asked.
"I'm investigating an investigation" was Dove's non-reply.
Eleven times [Deputy] Dove demanded Dudley's ID. And when the Deputy decided Dudley wasn't "going to cooperate", he cuffed, then tossed him in the back of his patrol car.
I've highlighted two particularly interesting bits of spin in the quoted section above. The first implies that the deputy did not tell Hiibel what he was investigating, which is a lie. The deputy did tell Hiibel why he was there - he said he was investigating a report of a fight.
Secondly, the description implies that the Deputy arbitrarily decided that Hiibel "wasn't going to cooperate," and made the decision to arrest him. Again, this is extremely misleading. The deputy didn't "decide" Hiibel wasn't cooperating - he flat out asked Hiibel if he was going to cooperate, and Hiibel very directly said "No." Also, the deputy didn't "decide" to arrest Hiibel - Hiibel repeatedly demanded that the deputy "take me to jail." When Hiibel finally said "No, I'm not going to cooperate, take me to jail," what else could the deputy have done?
This is a clear-cut case of obstruction of justice. The deputy didn't just pop by because he had nothing better to do. Someone called in a potentially dangerous situation. He was there to help. Upon watching the video, it is clear that there was a domestic violence situation being played out, and the deputy was totally justified in trying to investigate.
Hiibel was nothing more than a beligerent, abusive, and ignorant hick, who clearly has no respect for the law. He was trying as best he could to make trouble, and the deputy finally arrested him, with clearly just cause.
Watch the video yourself, and you'll see that this isn't a case of Big Brother. This isn't a deputy randomly arresting a citizen who didn't have their papers. This is an obvious case of a deputy trying to investigate a violent offense, and arresting an individual who was doing everything he could to impede Deputy Dove from carrying out his job.
Nothing to see here, folks. Just a criminal getting what he deserved.
I guess I should have been more specific regarding jurisdictions. In my jurisdiction (Canada), there is no "payroll tax", there is only "income tax," and different brackets. Income from 0 to $8000 isn't taxed at all. Income from $8000 to $35,000 is taxed at 16%. Income from $35,000 to $70,000 is taxed at 22%. The highest bracket is 29%, on income of $113,804 and above.
Capital gains are taxed in the highest bracket, but only 50% of it is taxed.
Thus, in my jurisdiction (Canada), the rich do indeed pay more taxes, even on a percentage basis, than the poor, or even middle class.
What kind of supper floppy disk do you have that you can copy 1-1.44M of data to in less than 8 seconds includeing detection?
I never said it would only take 8 seconds to record the data to the disk. I said it would only take 2 seconds for the system to recognize that a floppy disk had been inserted, and allow you to begin transferring data to it. With a USB drive, it take slightly longer for the system to recognize that you've attached a USB drive, and mount it for data transfer.
I regularly use floppies because it's easier to plop in a floppy, copy one file and pop out the floppy than it is to put in a USB drive, wait for your pc to recognize it (don't know about Macs), copy the file then have to correctly disconnect the USB drive
1. Time It takes my WinXP Pro laptop about 5 seconds to recognize the USB drive and allow me to explore its contents. Likewise, "Safely removing the hardware" takes 5 seconds, tops. So we're talking 10 seconds total for mounting/unmounting. Floppies take at least 2 seconds to be recognized, though granted dismounting is instantaneous. Advantage: floppy, by 8 seconds.
However, there is another huge issue I think you are neglecting:
2. Size While that floppy might be 8 seconds faster, I hope whatever you're planning on transporting is less than 1.44 MB. Nowadays, there is very little I transport that would fit on such an incredibly small storage medium. A 256 MB USB key can hold as much data as 178 floppy disks, and fits on my keychain.
Finally, a caveat regarding your "time" complaints about USB: it takes much longer to write 1.44 MB to a floppy disk than it does to write that same 1.44 MB to a USB drive. So your 8 second mounting/unmounting delta is rendered utterly moot.
Not all computers have CD-R, a flash reader or even a front USB jack.
I don't need all computers to have a front USB jack. I just need the ones I'll ever physically interact with to, and they do. My laptop, home PC, and work PC can all take USB drives. Therefore, I can do without the floppy drive.
The more people who find themselves in situations like mine, the fewer floppy drives we'll see out there. It's already happening.
I havn't seen too many successful people deciding to start failing miserably due to their punishment for being successful.
Then you're ignorant and uninformed. I suggest you take a browse around this site, and familiarize yourself with the AMT.
I don't mind paying much more in taxes than poor people. I *DO* mind that filthy rich people tend to pay a lower percentage of taxes than me.
If you think that rich people pay less taxes than you, on a percentage basis, then once again, you are woefully uninformed. One wonders why you bothered to post at all, when everything you say is provably false.
Cell phone makers would be jealous since they sell their hardware at a loss. (Granted, they get money from the service subscription.)
They do? Where exactly can I sign up for Nokia, Audiovox, Samsung, or Sony's wireless services?
You have no idea what you're talking about. The service providers buy the phones from the manufacturers (at a healthy profit to the manufacturers, contrary to your absurd claims). The service providers are the ones that turn around and give away the phones, or sell them at a loss, in exchange for service contracts.
Umm... how exactly a [will] lot of muscle mass help overweight people?
People, generally speaking, get overweight because of problems with their metabolism, [...]. None of these problems will be helped by growing more muscles.
Actually, if you do a little research about weight gain, muscle training, and fat burning, you'll learn that increased muscle mass actually results in an increased metabolism, which burns fat. Muscle is "metabolically active," which means it is burning calories even when you're not using them. If you're just sitting there, you're muscles are still burning calories. So the more muscles you have, the faster your body's metabolism becomes, and thus, you burn more fat, even without trying.
Why do we need any percentage of male/female for anything or everything? When the phonecompanies still used operators, it was women who were better in handling all these calls. They were better in 'multitasking' then men were.
Actually, originally, all phone company operators were male. Back then, women weren't allowed to work at all. But when all the men went off to war, they realized someone had to keep the phones working, so interestingly, phone operators were one of the first fields women were permitted to work in, simply out of necessity (that is, there were no men around to do the job, and it was an essential service).
But you're right that women have in fact evolved to be better multitaskers than men.
Slashdot Mirror
Probably a little late to respond, and this'll probably get modded down pretty quickly, but I can't resist ...
Or maybe [the RIAA] are too busy since they just sued a bunch more customers....
The Recording Industry Association of America on Wednesday announced it had sued another 744 individuals and refiled suits against 152 others who had ignored or declined offers to settle.
Huh? I don't follow you. They didn't sue their customers, they sued file swappers. They sued people who steal (oops, sorry, "infringed") their property. File swappers are not RIAA customers. If they'd bought the songs, they wouldn't be downloading them.
If GM helped bust a car-theft ring, would you claim that the car theives are "GM customers?"
Sigh, there, I said my piece, mod me down.
Wow, you've got some great shots. Coincidentally, I have a cat that looks very similar to "Magic." Her name is Trinity, and she's also an all-black, short-haired domestic, but she has a small white patch on her chest (just enough to keep her from being a "bad-luck" cat). I liked a lot of your night shots of Parliament, too. Nice work.
And has your ticket price gone down at all since they started showing ads?
Actually, yes, they have. Here in Ottawa, Ontario, all the major chains lowered their ticket prices last year by a couple of bucks, although the prevailing opinion was that the move was made to combat piracy, rather than return advertising dividends to the patrons themselves.
Can you read the document on the LCD screen without going blind or getting severe eye strain?
Good enough, then.
And that, folks, is what's wrong with Open Source.
"I'm happy with it the way it is, so learn to live with the things you don't like, or fix it yourself. But I'll never understand why you like that other, stable, feature-rich garbage app when you have a superior app like this one. Quit complaining."
"you've got to have a very feature-rich application."
...) want it to work right out of the box. They don't want to dick around buying and installing a half-dozen extra plugins. They want to pop in the CD, click "Install," and get to work on their term paper, or writing up Grandma's recipes.
No. You need to have a very stable application with a very good plugin architecture.
I don't mean to rain on your parade, but do you really think even 1/100th of Word's target market give's a rat's behind about "a very good plugin architecture?"
Do you really think that the kind of people who will buy Word are the same people who will happily browse Best Buy's rack of "Word Plugins," and buy the Spellchecker Plugin, Grammar Plugin, Japanese Language Plugin, and HTML Export Plugin, without complaining?
Users don't want "plugins." Developers do. So while a good plugin architecture might make sense in an IDE or source-control solution, it is utter overkill for a layperson app like a word processer. People who buy Word (and Money, and Excel, and PowerPoint,
I also am a firm supporter of the 2nd Amendment, and in fact own multiple firearms. Why? Because I believe there may come a time where I need to defend my ideals with violence. Frequently changes can come about through peaceful means, but when peaceful means fail and tyranny rears its ugly head, then blood must be spilled.
;)
I've picked this particular argument apart many times before, but what the heck, I'll take another stab at it here again.
Your reasoning is extremely flawed, and here's why:
1. You will never be able to convince enough people simultaneously that "enough is enough", and a line has been crossed. There will always be differing opinions, and those who believe that we should just wait a little longer, and it will get better. Timothy McVeigh, and the people of Ruby Ridge and Waco all thought that they were rebelling against a corrupt government too, but when they put out the call for help, we all just sat back and watched it on the news. Likewise, if you, or even you and a group of friends, were to take up arms against the government, you'd be completely alone. No one would join you. You'd be unable to organize a rebellion. Heck, if you even attempted to organize such a rebellion, you'd all be labeled as "terrorists."
2. Your puny weapons are no match for the military anyway. The 2nd amendment has long, long since been gutted of its original spirit. If the most right-wing interpretation of the ambiguous amendment is actually correct, and the intent was to guarantee that the citizenry had access to the same firepower as the government, so that in the event of a corrupt regime, the people could overthrow the tyrants, then it was violated long ago. The thinking was that $SAME_WEAPONS * $MORE_PEOPLE = $GUARANTEED_VICTORY. The "people" would outnumber the military, and with the same weapons, victory would be assured.
However, the pathetic firepower that the government permits you to own is no match for the superior weaponry of the 4 levels of the military. Their superior armament, organization, training, and intelligence network would render any attempt at a serious coup a non-starter.
I'm going to say what people don't like to hear, but can't deny: The 2nd Amendment should guarantee us the right to own nukes. There, I said it. If the right-wingers are correct, and the amendment is supposed to give "The People" the same firepower as "The Government," then we should be allowed to own nukes. Aircraft carriers, jets, ICBMs, bio/chem weapons, the whole 9 yards. Either that's what the 2nd Amendment means, or it isn't. Which is it, right-wingers?
I look at my intellectual forbears like
"Intellectual??" How did you come to that conclusion? I would have thought "ideological" would have been a more appropriate word, or even leave off the extraneous adjective altogether. What does intellect have to do with it? They simply shared your beliefs. And for someone who paints himself in the same intellectual class as such famous figures, I think you could have spelled "forbearers" correct.
Anyway, to sum up a long-winded rant: The 2nd Amendment should either be interpreted in its true spirit, and USAmericans should therefore be allowed to buy, possess, and test the exact same firepower as their military, or it is an outdated anachronistic relic from an era where no one could possibly have ever forseen weapons of the magnitude we have today (nuclear/chem/bio), and it should be rephrased to more accurately reflect the common, liberal interpretation, or removed completely.
It's a bit shortsighted to assume that Java magically makes bad programmers less risky.
Uhm... but it does. It doesn't make them good coders, of course, but it does substantially limit the damage they can do, compared with C.
I'm reminded of a humourous quote by Bjarne Stroustrup, which was something to the effect of, "C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you'll take your whole leg off."
You may have noted that people trend Liberal when young, and then trend Conservative as they age. The exceptions to these trends merely test them.
That's because as people age they tend to get bitter and jaded about social topics until they really don't give a damn.
No, I don't think that's it. It seems to me that when I discuss social issues with young people, they focus on the emotional, "touchy-feely" aspects of the issues. They see what the suffering and outcomes, but don't really have workable solutions. They say things such as, "Man, like, just imagine if everyone in the country donated a dollar, you'd have like, $300 million, then you could save ALL the whales. They should just raise everybody's taxes a dollar."
The young haven't been part of the system long enough to see the big picture. They don't understand that the economy is, for the most part, a closed system. You can't funnel money into one program without taking it from another, or raising taxes. "So raise taxes," they say, without understanding that doing so would affect inflation, interest rates, housing, welfare, and even crime (the vast majority of crime is committed by poor people). It's a complex balancing act.
But since they can't understand that yet, they by default focus on what they *can* understand, which unfortunately is often overly simplistic, like, "all I know is, that guy doesn't have a home, he's living on the streets, he's done nothing wrong, and we should give him a home." Young people, and liberals in general, tend to have a "gimmie" attitude, where they feel entitled to things. They see that we live in a rich society, and thus feel that they deserve the best healthcare, the best schools, and a good job. The American dream, basically. They want these things, because they see other, older people with them. Note that I said "older."
And that's where we get into the other half of this comparison. Those "older" people who have the retirement savings, the home, the nice car, and the good education are usually conservatives. Conservatives often start out as Liberals, but become disillusioned when they realize that society isn't going to give them the handouts they feel they deserve. So they set to work earning the things they want for themselves, and become bitter at the government for not helping them as much as they feel it should've.
Conservatives then develop the attitude that since they had to work hard for what they've got, then everybody else should have to work hard, too. They feel that people don't deserve free handouts - they should have to work for them. The see the government robbing their paychecks of thousands of dollars every month, and they see the ungrateful benefactors of those taxes complaining that they want even more, and they tend to develop an "us versus them" attitude. By now, they've aged enough to have been paying taxes for quite a few years, and have seen little change. They've seen the real sacrifices they've had to make in order to get the house, the car, the education fund for their kids. They feel like the government hasn't done anything for them financially, and they see all this money being funneled into programs for people who they perceive as lazy, and thus, undeserving.
The aged conservative feels that since he's successful, and has worked hard and sacrificed, then therefore anyone can be successful if they work hard and sacrifice. The corralary, of course, being that all those unsuccessful people he sees out there, benefitting from his tax dollars, must therefore be lazy, and unwilling to sacrifice. He perceives that those poor people (who are usually liberal), are demanding the same things that Mr. Conservative has, but they don't want to work for it.
Neither side is completely justified. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle. But it is certainly interesting to listen to the opinions of a young, naive, liberal student and contrast them with an older, conservative relative.
Just food for thought, not meant as a troll or flamebait.
No, it's an unfair old thing. A lot of countries require warrants before phones can be tapped.
Don't be ignorant. Warrants are required before the phones can be tapped. This article simply says that the requirement that lines can be tapped is being extended to VoIP. This prevents the scenario where a fed walks into the CO with a warrant, says "We have a warrant here that permits us to tap this line. Set it up for us.", and the lab tech responding, "I'm sorry, these switches don't have the 'wiretap' feature."
The law is just saying that all switches (whether landline, wireless, or now, VoIP) must be able to be tapped. Of course, they still need a warrant to actually carry out the tap, but there must be no "un-tappable" lines.
Get it?
This is really non-news. This is already standard procedure for all phone systems, and has been for decades. The same situation exists with both wireline and wireless phone systems. From practically the very beginning, phone companies were required to provided wiretap services to the authorities. As a former Nortel employee, this was something that we had to include in every single wireless switch that is sold. And no, the government doesn't pay for it. The phone companies (that is to say, the customers) eat the cost, and always have.
The writeup makes it sound like this is some unfair, new thing being lobbed at VoIP. It's not. It's just applying the exact same rules that exist for current system to the new system.
What next? "Government attempts to scuttle VoIP by requiring them to abide by 5 9's reliability and provide 911 service?"
Had to buy CRAP item X. When (not if) it breaks, I buy a new one, swap contents, and return the old one in new packaging. It was "defective".
Uhm, wouldn't it be more ethical to simply patronize companies who produce more durable goods, rather than ripping off the cheaper ones? I mean, if you're trying to make it look like you take the high road, you might actually try taking it.
I wrote a paper about how some of this stuff is impacting the environment not to long ago. I thought I had an idea, ends up the actual numbers are WAY higher than I ever would have thought.
Really? How does it compare to the really nasty chemicals that are involved in developing a film-based photographic process?
How do the results change when you take into account that the technology is re-used over and over and over, whereas film can only be used once?
So which is harder on the environment? Film or digital?
LCDs are manufactured using an resource-intensive process, AFAIK, with large volumes of contanimated water as a waste product, and large volumes of dangerous chemicals being used/reused/disposed in the process.
These cameras are reusable. Sure, there may be some waste during manufacturing, but the fact that the exact same materials can be used for hundreds of photos makes up for it.
Film, on the other hand, uses equally nasty chemicals and byproducts, if not worse, and is a 1-shot deal. You can't "delete" a film photo and take it again - its commited to the silver halide crystals, like it or not. And the stuff they use to turn that film into prints is much, much worse than the ink in a digital printer.
Get your priorities straight, bud. This is good for the environment.
It is definitely possible to make yourself physically sick if you are mentally convinced you are sick.
Here's my quick story to back up what you're saying. You know that hangover feeling, where you feel weak, and you feel like your heart is skipping a beat every now and then. Well, I felt that way after a night of drinking each weekend. I recognized that it was normal. Except that it started getting worse as the weeks wore on. After a night of drinking, I'd wake up with the usual hangover, but that weak, "fluttery" feeling stuck around all day, even into the evening of the day after drinking.
So I cut back on the drinking. But by now, even if I didn't drink at all, the weekend would come, and I'd still get that feeling. I started really feeling weird, like I wasn't sure my heart was even beating (it was). I felt a little nauseous, and started getting cold sweats. I was waking up in the middle of the night, shivering and sweating at the same time. My heart was racing. I didn't know what was wrong with me.
Finally, it got so bad that one night I went to the hospital in the middle of the night. They drew blood, checked my blood pressure and pulse (120 bpm, resting). They said everything looked normal. I went home, tried to get some sleep, and was normal again by morning.
The second time I went to the hospital in the middle of the night, they did the same routine, and suspected maybe an overactive thyroid or something, but said the blood tests looked perfectly normal. I was confused, embarassed, and scared. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I hadn't even told my family what was going on. I just wanted to feel "normal" again.
I met with my family doctor to discuss what was going on and review the results of my tests. She asked me a lot of "soft" questions about stress, money, working too hard, etc. She suggested that I might be suffering from anxiety. I thought it was absurd! I've been through a heckuvalot of stress in the past with no issues at all. I work great under stress, and I didn't have any stress in my life at all at that time anyway, except for this whole "WTF is wrong with me" thing.
Well, it turned out that the whole "WTF is wrong with me thing" was what was causing the anxiety. I had anxiety over having anxiety! I know it sounds weird, but after that meeting with my doctor, I believed her, and it never happened again. I've been "normal" ever since.
I hesitate to say it was "all in my head," because it wasn't. It was rooted in my head, but I was experiencing very real, tangible symptoms. I was "anxious" over figuring out what was wrong with me.
Anyway, just curious if anyone else has had a similar experience.
who has the best doping doctors who get past detection.
Why does everyone insist on viewing doping as a "black-and-white" issue?
The human body is a very complex machine. The chemical reactions that take place in side are very complicated and sensitive. Athletes carefully monitor their nutrition, and supplement their bodies with well-timed servings of synthetic protein, creatine, and other compounds and hormones. Where do you draw the line? Should it be illegal to take protein shakes? What if a competitor eats a huge number of chicken breasts? Or drinks more than the allowable portions of milk?
My point in all this is that there are many things that affect an athlete's ability to perform. You can't just say, "that guy was doping, so he's a cheat. Everyone else passed the doping tests, so they're all honest, supreme athletes." It's not that simple. They're all taking complex coctails of nutrients and supplements. They all take vitamins, energy bars, protein shakes, creatine, testosterone, lactic-acid inhibitors, and who-knows-what else. If one of them accidentally takes just a few too many grams of one of his supplements, he/she could set off the doping alarm, and fail the test. That doesn't mean they deliberately cheated, unless you consider all the other athletes to be "cheating" too, when they follow their artificial diets.
NO ONE competes "naturally" anymore, in the sense that they just eat plain old food, sleep when they feel like it, and then compete. They all have carefully-monitored sleep cycles and diets. They're treated like machines, like high-performance engines. They're groomed to compete, sometimes even to the degree that they're supposed to peak on the day of their competition (that is, if you asked them to re-run their competition the next day, their time wouldn't be anywhere near the time they were able to turn in the day before).
So what's the answer? Ban all supplements? All protein powders? Energy bars? Low-fat foods? Forbid athletes from taking more than 8 hours of sleep a night? Should we try to make sure everyone is on equal footing? Or do we allow them to do everything they can to hone their bodies into high-performance machines that'll break records (and thus, attract ratings, sponsors, and ad revenue)?
Who's to say that a mild steroid is cheating, but a rigorous diet of protein shakes, Myoplex, ephedrine, Xenadrine, selenium, and whatever else is OK?
I've highlighted two particularly interesting bits of spin in the quoted section above. The first implies that the deputy did not tell Hiibel what he was investigating, which is a lie. The deputy did tell Hiibel why he was there - he said he was investigating a report of a fight.
Secondly, the description implies that the Deputy arbitrarily decided that Hiibel "wasn't going to cooperate," and made the decision to arrest him. Again, this is extremely misleading. The deputy didn't "decide" Hiibel wasn't cooperating - he flat out asked Hiibel if he was going to cooperate, and Hiibel very directly said "No." Also, the deputy didn't "decide" to arrest Hiibel - Hiibel repeatedly demanded that the deputy "take me to jail." When Hiibel finally said "No, I'm not going to cooperate, take me to jail," what else could the deputy have done?
This is a clear-cut case of obstruction of justice. The deputy didn't just pop by because he had nothing better to do. Someone called in a potentially dangerous situation. He was there to help. Upon watching the video, it is clear that there was a domestic violence situation being played out, and the deputy was totally justified in trying to investigate.
Hiibel was nothing more than a beligerent, abusive, and ignorant hick, who clearly has no respect for the law. He was trying as best he could to make trouble, and the deputy finally arrested him, with clearly just cause.
Watch the video yourself, and you'll see that this isn't a case of Big Brother. This isn't a deputy randomly arresting a citizen who didn't have their papers. This is an obvious case of a deputy trying to investigate a violent offense, and arresting an individual who was doing everything he could to impede Deputy Dove from carrying out his job.
Nothing to see here, folks. Just a criminal getting what he deserved.
I guess I should have been more specific regarding jurisdictions. In my jurisdiction (Canada), there is no "payroll tax", there is only "income tax," and different brackets. Income from 0 to $8000 isn't taxed at all. Income from $8000 to $35,000 is taxed at 16%. Income from $35,000 to $70,000 is taxed at 22%. The highest bracket is 29%, on income of $113,804 and above.
Capital gains are taxed in the highest bracket, but only 50% of it is taxed.
Thus, in my jurisdiction (Canada), the rich do indeed pay more taxes, even on a percentage basis, than the poor, or even middle class.
What kind of supper floppy disk do you have that you can copy 1-1.44M of data to in less than 8 seconds includeing detection?
I never said it would only take 8 seconds to record the data to the disk. I said it would only take 2 seconds for the system to recognize that a floppy disk had been inserted, and allow you to begin transferring data to it. With a USB drive, it take slightly longer for the system to recognize that you've attached a USB drive, and mount it for data transfer.
I regularly use floppies because it's easier to plop in a floppy, copy one file and pop out the floppy than it is to put in a USB drive, wait for your pc to recognize it (don't know about Macs), copy the file then have to correctly disconnect the USB drive
1. Time It takes my WinXP Pro laptop about 5 seconds to recognize the USB drive and allow me to explore its contents. Likewise, "Safely removing the hardware" takes 5 seconds, tops. So we're talking 10 seconds total for mounting/unmounting. Floppies take at least 2 seconds to be recognized, though granted dismounting is instantaneous. Advantage: floppy, by 8 seconds.
However, there is another huge issue I think you are neglecting:
2. Size While that floppy might be 8 seconds faster, I hope whatever you're planning on transporting is less than 1.44 MB. Nowadays, there is very little I transport that would fit on such an incredibly small storage medium. A 256 MB USB key can hold as much data as 178 floppy disks, and fits on my keychain.
Finally, a caveat regarding your "time" complaints about USB: it takes much longer to write 1.44 MB to a floppy disk than it does to write that same 1.44 MB to a USB drive. So your 8 second mounting/unmounting delta is rendered utterly moot.
Not all computers have CD-R, a flash reader or even a front USB jack.
I don't need all computers to have a front USB jack. I just need the ones I'll ever physically interact with to, and they do. My laptop, home PC, and work PC can all take USB drives. Therefore, I can do without the floppy drive.
The more people who find themselves in situations like mine, the fewer floppy drives we'll see out there. It's already happening.
I havn't seen too many successful people deciding to start failing miserably due to their punishment for being successful.
Then you're ignorant and uninformed. I suggest you take a browse around this site, and familiarize yourself with the AMT.
I don't mind paying much more in taxes than poor people. I *DO* mind that filthy rich people tend to pay a lower percentage of taxes than me.
If you think that rich people pay less taxes than you, on a percentage basis, then once again, you are woefully uninformed. One wonders why you bothered to post at all, when everything you say is provably false.
Cell phone makers would be jealous since they sell their hardware at a loss. (Granted, they get money from the service subscription.)
They do? Where exactly can I sign up for Nokia, Audiovox, Samsung, or Sony's wireless services?
You have no idea what you're talking about. The service providers buy the phones from the manufacturers (at a healthy profit to the manufacturers, contrary to your absurd claims). The service providers are the ones that turn around and give away the phones, or sell them at a loss, in exchange for service contracts.
Umm... how exactly a [will] lot of muscle mass help overweight people?
People, generally speaking, get overweight because of problems with their metabolism, [...]. None of these problems will be helped by growing more muscles.
Actually, if you do a little research about weight gain, muscle training, and fat burning, you'll learn that increased muscle mass actually results in an increased metabolism, which burns fat. Muscle is "metabolically active," which means it is burning calories even when you're not using them. If you're just sitting there, you're muscles are still burning calories. So the more muscles you have, the faster your body's metabolism becomes, and thus, you burn more fat, even without trying.
Dupe!
(I'm joking)
Why do we need any percentage of male/female for anything or everything? When the phonecompanies still used operators, it was women who were better in handling all these calls. They were better in 'multitasking' then men were.
Actually, originally, all phone company operators were male. Back then, women weren't allowed to work at all. But when all the men went off to war, they realized someone had to keep the phones working, so interestingly, phone operators were one of the first fields women were permitted to work in, simply out of necessity (that is, there were no men around to do the job, and it was an essential service).
But you're right that women have in fact evolved to be better multitaskers than men.