While of course God Exists is not an empiricially testable hypothesis, stilll
OK, here it is - if god is omnipotent, can he make a stone so heavy that even he can't lift it?
That depends on the definition of "omnipotent". The best definition I've seen is "able to do anything which is logically possible" (as descriptions which do not map to something logically possible are just collections of symbols with no possible referrent -- sentences without meaning). So, no, since "a stone so heavy that even [an being possessing omnipotence] can't lift it" is itself a logically inconsistent statement, it is not something which can logically exist, or be created, and therefore is not demanded by omnipotence.
According to Gore, global warming will end it all in 10 years. Yet he felt no need or responsibility to do anything about it when he was a Senator or Vice President.
You mean when he was writing Earth in the Balance, or when he was part of the Administration that negotiated and signed on to the Kyoto Protocol?
He felt no need to campaign on the issue in 2000
You mean the campaign in which during which he said this:
I do. I think that in this 21st century we will soon see the consequences of what's called global warming. There was a study just a few weeks ago suggesting that in summertime the north polar ice cap will be completely gone in 50 years. Already people see the strange weather conditions that the old timers say they've never seen before in their lifetimes. And what's happening is the level of pollution is increasing significantly. Now, here is the good news, Jim. If we take the leadership role and build the new technologies, like the new kinds of cars and trucks that Detroit is itching to build, then we can create millions of good new jobs by being first into the market with these new kinds of cars and trucks and other kinds of technologies. You know the Japanese are breathing down our necks on this. They're moving very rapidly because they know that it is a fast-growing world market. Some of these other countries, particularly in the developing world, their pollution is much worse than anywhere else and their people want higher standards of living. And so they're looking for ways to satisfy their desire for a better life and still reduce pollution at the same time. I think that holding onto the old ways and the old argument that the environment and the economy are in conflict is really outdated. We have to be bold. We have to provide leadership. Now it's true that we disagree on this. The governor said that he doesn't think this problem is necessarily caused by people. He's for letting the oil companies into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Houston has just become the smoggiest city in the country. And Texas is number one in industrial pollution. We have a very different outlook. And I'll tell you this, I will fight for a clean environment in ways that strengthen our economy.
and he feels no responsibility to run for president in 2008 in order to get the power necessary for him to save the world.
I don't see your point. Is it not possible to believe that trying to run for President may not be the best way to advance the cause of fighting global warming? Seems to me you've got three outright lies, and one complete irrelevancy, here.
That's not how the scientific process works. You can't prove a negative.
Science is all about proving negatives. Indeed, the only thing ever proven in science is that a model is wrong. A scientific theory, even one that has been granted the vaunted title of a "law", is simply a hypothesis which explains the available evidence better than alternatives and which could conceivably be shown to be wrong, has been vigorously attempted to be proven wrong, and failed to be proven wrong.
I have no idea how you could have a genuinely open, fair, multi-party system. It would presumably need to borrow some ideas from proportional representation, as that seems to be the only method of reliably getting multiple parties into politics.
There are lots of means of acheiving more proportional representative than the US/UK first-pass-the-post travesty. You can go with a party-list proportional representation scheme -- which is what a lot of the world uses. The danger there isn't "too many parties" but rather that without voters selecting particular office-holders, you have too little personal accountability.
To acheive personal accountability and (more than the US/UK have) proportional representation, I think the best model is candidate-centered elections using a preference-ballot multiwinner system along the lines of Single Transferrable Vote, with small multimember legislative districts (probably between 3 and 9 or so members per district).
I also think that the system needs a third, unelected house, where members are selected from the jury pool and who can place bills on trial, as per any other trial. The idea would be to have a group of anonymous people that lobbyists could not identify to corrupt, and who would retain any influence for such a short time that power itself could not corrupt them.
I'm not sure what you mean by putting a bill "on trial, as per any other trial". On trial for what? Who would defend the bill? Why is this better than the US system which requires a challenge to be made by a party with a real, concrete interest in the outcome?
Plus, while they might not be identified in advance, unless they were rotated extremely frequently and/or employed extensive secrecy rules, lobbyists could identify them fairly easily once the house was seated.
Re:Similar to an issue I had with published music.
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New IP Treaty Looming?
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The tobacco lobby is just as powerful as Disney, seems to me, and still I see smoking being banned in restaurants.
Sure, its as powerful, or more, than Disney, alone, but hardly as powerful as Disney's allies, plus, Disney and their allies have got a lot easier job since there product is a lot less (at least provably) deadly, which kind of disarms the opposition.
Plus, and this is important to politicians, Disney and its allies are, or rather include, virtually the entirety of the major media houses.
Re:Similar to an issue I had with published music.
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New IP Treaty Looming?
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Seems to me that this is similar: Steamboat Willie (e.g.) might eventually run out of copyright,
Neither Steamboat Willie nor Mein Kampf will ever run out of copyright, so long as the interested parties can afford the lobbyists to make sure that doesn't happen.
The constitution doesn't give us rights, its restricts what government can do. This is something that's been lost on most people for some reason. By default we're allowed to do whatever we want.
While that's nice ideology, the history of government unconstrained by actively defended (whether written or not) limiting constitution suggests that the real default is that the government is allowed to do whatever it wants; the people, not so much.
It has no other purpose but determining location, as much as a knife has no other purpose than cutting. But neither of those is inherently threatening purpose.
Both functions can be used menacingly, and both can be used in manners that are inoffensive. In the case of the tracking device, that centers around communication and consent regarding the conditions in which it will be used.
Article I, Section 8 lists the powers of the Congress; the "Authority of the United States" with regard to the treaties in Article VI is simply the Article II treaty power itself, which is constrained by the negative provisions of the Constitution, but not limited to the other positive grants (whether to Congress in Art. I, Sec. 8, or otherwise), as it is itself a positive grant.
Telecommunications and digital electronics have demonstrated that bits of information do not behave like physical object, which are subject to property laws because they are naturally scarce.
Physical objects are not subject to property laws because they are naturally scarce.
They are subject to property laws because protecting them encourages people to create value.
This is also the reason -- rather more expressly, in the US -- that information is protected as "intellectual property".
The GPL -- and many other open-source and related copyright licenses do this -- make it very clear that it only license copyright rights, and that other rights may require separate licenses; if under the new treaty the original broadcaster needs nothing but a copyright license, but simply by broadcasting it acquires a special new exclusive "broadcast property" right, this will enable redistributors of GPL (and similar) content to impose restrictive distribution licenses without violating the terms of the GPL, since this new "broadcast property" right will be entirely separate from the copyright licensed by the GPL.
...insofar as broadcasts deserve protection -- that is, to the extent that they include original creative work, even if they are derivative works -- they creator of the broadcast already is protected by copyright; as is the original underlying work.
There is no use for "broadcast property" except to protect broadcasts that are of material that is not subject to copyright in the first place -- which is very little (since just putting together a broadcast usually creates an original work of authorship), except material already in the public domain.
what we need is a system for evaluating lawyers similar to myspace. the lawyers take scene photos in their bathrrom mirror, hiding behind their fringes, making cpu-intensive profiles. you stalk the hottest ones (you secretly think emos are *cute*) and leave them creepy messages. you join groups toa lign yourself with specific policies. the lawyers with the most friends win.
Except that the participants aren't exclusively lawyers, that's a pretty fair summary of the status quo political system.
You read it improperly, at least according to every Supreme Court ruling on the issue. Particularly, clipping in the middle of that sentence omits the key part of the sentence:
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
They are "on the same level" in that they are all "supreme" over the Constitution and laws of the several states.
Statute law and treaties are still subordinate to the Constitution, though the treaty power is itself a positive grant of federal power and, therefore, its use is (unlike the power to make statute law) not limited to the other positive grants of power to the federal government (though it is limited by the negative provisions denying power to the federal government.)
No, because the Treaty Power is itself a power delegated to the US by the Constitution, and thus Amendment X does nothing to limit the treaty power. That's the central holding of the case (Missouri v. Holland) cited by the grandparent.
Of course, treaties already can't override established Constitutional Rights (see Reid v. Covert), its just that the powers retained by the States under Amendment X do not include those granted to the federal government, including the treaty power in all its scope under the bare text of the unamended Constitution.
Of course, we'd still be having this discussion, because the proponents of the treaty would (and will, now, anyway) argue that it (or, rather, the domestic implementing legislation) is within Congress Commerce power.
The U.S. Constitution explicitly grants copyright power to Congress, but it doesn't deny further IP legislation, and in fact says that treaties shall be the supreme law of the land. That is, unless something in the treaty is explicitly banned by the Constitution, any powers any treaties give to Congress are valid.
Insofar as such "IP" legislation necessarily infringes on the freedom of speech, press, etc., it certainly does, see Amendment I; this is distinguished from the claim that Amendment X forbade the power claimedin Missouri v. Holland because Amendment X by its own terms only reserves those powers not already given to the Federal government (which would make it powerless to restrict the treaty power), whereas Amendment I limits the powers of the federal government, including, inter alia, the treaty power.
The reason these stories on Slashdot are useless is because all of the slashbots here will be screaming "I don't want ads!". Well, tough shit. Advertising is part of our world and culture and they are coming to video games whether you want them to or not.
Delete "on Slashdot" and replace "slashbots" with "family-values groups" and "advertising" with "sex and nudity", and it'd be just as true, that is, sure, its part of our world and culture, and, sure, people want to put it in games, but, you know what, push hard enough, and you can control it.
Especially if you use parents need to know about and decide on what their children are exposed to as the lever.
Signing up for this situation is having the capacity. It is no more making the threat to use it for disciplinary monitoring than owning a chef's knife is a threat to butcher your children with it if they stay out late.
Now, depending on your relationship and what else you do or don't say about either tool, there may or may not be an express or implied threat along with just having the capacity. But the capacity itself is not a threat to use it.
As I understand it, writing the spec from the illegal source code might itself be a further violation (implementing the spec wouldn't).
So, so long as the person writing the spec is in a "safe" jurisdiction, and the person implementing it, if not in a "safe" jurisdiction, didn't coordinate with them (which might be illegal in their "unsafe" jurisdiction), then this is probably legal.
The term native would imply that it's a complete port to the X Window System.
Er, no, it doesn't.
"Linux native" does not mean "X Windows native".
Whether or not an individual cares about the API details isn't relevant to this thread. The point the original poster was making was simply this is not a "native" port.
If its not a Windows binary running under a separate emulator like wine, then its a native Linux application.
It may or may not use your be written against your favorite GUI library, but so what?
Wrong. The threat (perticularly when you have the means) of tracking a person is just as controlling as actually tracking them.
Sure. But having the means is not making the threat. Sure, if you threaten to use it for disciplinary tracking, its controlling. But merely having the capacity is not controlling; it may be taken as a threat if there is already a bad, untrusting relationship, but that has nothing to do with the technology.
Slashdot Mirror
I think its more realistic to be concerned that if it's released "to soon", there might still be computers around running Windows Vista.
There are lots of means of acheiving more proportional representative than the US/UK first-pass-the-post travesty. You can go with a party-list proportional representation scheme -- which is what a lot of the world uses. The danger there isn't "too many parties" but rather that without voters selecting particular office-holders, you have too little personal accountability.
To acheive personal accountability and (more than the US/UK have) proportional representation, I think the best model is candidate-centered elections using a preference-ballot multiwinner system along the lines of Single Transferrable Vote, with small multimember legislative districts (probably between 3 and 9 or so members per district).
I'm not sure what you mean by putting a bill "on trial, as per any other trial". On trial for what? Who would defend the bill? Why is this better than the US system which requires a challenge to be made by a party with a real, concrete interest in the outcome?
Plus, while they might not be identified in advance, unless they were rotated extremely frequently and/or employed extensive secrecy rules, lobbyists could identify them fairly easily once the house was seated.
Interestingly, of in another side alley of this thread, I made essentially the same point.
Article I, Section 8 lists the powers of the Congress; the "Authority of the United States" with regard to the treaties in Article VI is simply the Article II treaty power itself, which is constrained by the negative provisions of the Constitution, but not limited to the other positive grants (whether to Congress in Art. I, Sec. 8, or otherwise), as it is itself a positive grant.
Physical objects are not subject to property laws because they are naturally scarce.
They are subject to property laws because protecting them encourages people to create value.
This is also the reason -- rather more expressly, in the US -- that information is protected as "intellectual property".
The GPL -- and many other open-source and related copyright licenses do this -- make it very clear that it only license copyright rights, and that other rights may require separate licenses; if under the new treaty the original broadcaster needs nothing but a copyright license, but simply by broadcasting it acquires a special new exclusive "broadcast property" right, this will enable redistributors of GPL (and similar) content to impose restrictive distribution licenses without violating the terms of the GPL, since this new "broadcast property" right will be entirely separate from the copyright licensed by the GPL.
...insofar as broadcasts deserve protection -- that is, to the extent that they include original creative work, even if they are derivative works -- they creator of the broadcast already is protected by copyright; as is the original underlying work. There is no use for "broadcast property" except to protect broadcasts that are of material that is not subject to copyright in the first place -- which is very little (since just putting together a broadcast usually creates an original work of authorship), except material already in the public domain.
They are "on the same level" in that they are all "supreme" over the Constitution and laws of the several states.
Statute law and treaties are still subordinate to the Constitution, though the treaty power is itself a positive grant of federal power and, therefore, its use is (unlike the power to make statute law) not limited to the other positive grants of power to the federal government (though it is limited by the negative provisions denying power to the federal government.)
No, because the Treaty Power is itself a power delegated to the US by the Constitution, and thus Amendment X does nothing to limit the treaty power. That's the central holding of the case (Missouri v. Holland) cited by the grandparent.
Of course, treaties already can't override established Constitutional Rights (see Reid v. Covert), its just that the powers retained by the States under Amendment X do not include those granted to the federal government, including the treaty power in all its scope under the bare text of the unamended Constitution.
Of course, we'd still be having this discussion, because the proponents of the treaty would (and will, now, anyway) argue that it (or, rather, the domestic implementing legislation) is within Congress Commerce power.
As I understand it, writing the spec from the illegal source code might itself be a further violation (implementing the spec wouldn't).
So, so long as the person writing the spec is in a "safe" jurisdiction, and the person implementing it, if not in a "safe" jurisdiction, didn't coordinate with them (which might be illegal in their "unsafe" jurisdiction), then this is probably legal.